Glass
by Libbyish
Summary: The love of Hurley's life comes to be with him from beyond the grave, and tries to set things right by divulging secrets he might rather not know. Complete, please read and review!
1. Chapter of Wine

Author's note and disclaimer: The inspiration for this work came from many places aside from _Lost_. I would like to credit _Le Portrait De Petit Cossette_, Mark Z. Danielewski's _House of Leaves_, Stephen King's _The Dark Tower_, the various writings of Chuck Palahniuk, and an anonymous piece of creepypasta I found during my online wanderings.

_Lost _and its characters are not mine. I claim no ownership of them, and this fic is not for profit.

Passages from _House of Leaves_ are not mine. I claim no ownership of them, or anything else I borrowed with artistic licence.

I am eternally thankful to Cynthia Watros and Jorge Garcia for delivering performances that stuck with me enough to desire to write 69 pages devoted to their characters. You'll never know how much of an emotional impact you have on me.

Advisory: This story contains instances of graphic smut, blood/gore, and horror concepts in later chapters. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Please review if you read! Feedback helps me improve.

_**Glass**_

**Chapter of Wine**

_The angles of your wrists__  
preserve a certain mystery,  
__unknown by any lips  
or written down in history._

_- House of Leaves_

--

When they came home, the six of them, they were international headlines. Breaking news segments that interrupted daytime programs. Interviews and authorized biographies. Not individual people anymore; just the reflection of a lie based only a bit on real life, projected onto a television screen.

He, in particular, was an attention-grabber, despite wanting no part of it. A lottery winner who had gone on to survive a plane crash where almost all his fellow passengers died? Anymore, the name Hugo Reyes was associated with luck. Never mind that he had signed all of his cursed lottery winnings to his parents; the out-of-court settlement from Oceanic Airlines more than covered his needs. And never mind that he considered himself the unluckiest person in the world. Most of all, never mind that he had come to wish that he hadn't just remained stranded there, but _died_ there. Things like that don't have anything to do with miracles. A suicidal survivor does not a feel-good legend make.

Eventually, the worst of the attention faded to background noise, just snow on the giant TV screen his life had become. News crews ceased to follow his every movement. He was left to live his life in as much peace as the accidental heroes of the world are allowed to. When the guilt of leaving them all behind became too great, he ate. He ate and ate until it felt like the food would eat him alive instead, and at that point, he checked himself in for a sunshiny stay at Santa Rosa. The pills and the therapy helped him choke back his guilt and function again, but it's not what made him stop binging. _That_ was something he wasn't allowed to talk about to anyone, not even the psychiatrists who were required to keep their mouths shut; he couldn't talk about it with the rest of the Six, either. He might have been able to talk to Kate about it, to cry on her shoulder and share memories, but she was entangled in her own legal battle. He would feel weird going to Jack about it, and Sayid and Sun were just too far away. And Aaron? Are you_ kidding?_

No, he just had to pretend that the two of them had never even locked eyes, he and the woman he had almost-maybe-sort-of-loved. As far as anyone was concerned, she had died in the crash. They had never conversed about things he told nobody else, he couldn't describe her appearance down to the last detail...hell, he didn't even know her damn name.

Thinking about it, he realized that last part was at least half right.

--

Once he had checked out, he realized that he hadn't been this lost even on an island in the middle of nowhere. They had always said you can't go home again, and it turned out that they were right, whoever they were. He wasn't the same person, and going back to live with his parents would only be uncomfortable. His mother's concern suffocating him, and his father being there, possibly for him but mostly for the money...

No. That wouldn't work for him at all, not since he had come to terms with what his father meant to his mental state.

Oops. There he was again, thinking about realizations that he'd never had, people who had never saved his life in more ways than one. He had to stop doing that, to start coming to terms with reality as it was, laid out on every news site that had ever existed. If he was ever unsure about what exactly had happened to him on the island, he could just left-click on a computer mouse and there it would be, in his own words, laid out black in ten-point font. He'd do good to remember that.

In the end, when he got himself a nice little place in a small town, he decided to collect antiques. Relics, the years coated dusty-thick upon their surfaces until he wiped them clean and laid bare their stories...the idea of it appealed to some part of him that hadn't existed before all this_. _Their steady, insistent oldness calmed him, and the elbow grease required to restore them allowed him waking time where he didn't have to think deeply at all.

He bought a decrepit grandfather clock first and taught himself how to repair and replace the worn-out old parts, working until it was able to measure the passage of time once more. Stripping and staining it with the glossy dark syrup from the hardware store, until the whole place stank of sharp fumes. Cleaning the glass face, and polishing the brass pendulum. Then came the silver candelabra; before using the polish designed for such a purpose, he burned nearly an entire notebook full of blank paper and rubbed the ashes into its surface. When the crumbly flakes drifted to the floor, they took the worst of the tarnish with them, and then it was merely a case of polishing and re-polishing until it seemed to glow like the moon. Or like something alive.

_Not _like pale green eyes, clear and pure as fresh water. Eyes that to look at, when one was thirsty, would banish the need at an instant. Most certainly not. He didn't think these things...but when he _didn't not_ think them, it was in feelings rather than words. He had never been the poetic type.

His cozy house began to fill up. Clocks, candlesticks, cloudy paperweights and old radios. Never paintings or other art, because he only wanted what he could fix or clean or work on in some other way. Work was release, work was time he could spend out of his own head, where the ghosts couldn't follow him. He bought and bought, restoring objects by removing the rust and tarnish and cobwebs that told their stories. Re-birthing them by erasing and reshaping their history, until their newfound gloss and cleanliness was all that the world got to see. All that the world _needed_ and _wanted_ to see. The purchases piled up.

Then came the day when he bought the wineglasses.

--

They were packed into a wooden crate, sawdust and crumpled paper cushioning their grimy surfaces, and he bought the whole lot of them. The packing hadn't been perfect; a fair number of them had shattered, and he cut his hands during their removal. There were a number of partial sets there, mismatched, and some that were the only surviving members of their respective styles. Taller ones, shorter ones, ones with larger bell-like cups, ones with thinner stems, clear and tinted ones. He cleaned them all as he went, placing them into a refurbished cherrywood cabinet that had housed china in a former life. The surviving ones had to be resilient in order to not crack like their peers, but they were still so delicate. Full of years, their outdated style shining through, and yet still unbelievably lovely. And they did _not _make him think of any beautiful, sensitive-strong older women, with traces of dark circles under their eyes and full lips and a tendency to sunburn.

The final intact one was his favorite. It was transparent with swirling, shifting pools of color, like a puddle of oil reflecting the sun from the pavement: greens and blues, reds and dusky roses. This one he placed upon a little circular table, resting on an old and fragile doily he had hand-washed with the mildest soap, in order to better catch the light. Shifting his head minutely as he sat produced the most spectacular, slick colorations, and as he lost himself in them, he also lost himself in deep feeling, just a step below waking thought.

What had her last name been, he wondered? He couldn't even begin to guess: none of his ideas seemed suited to her, able to capture her soul in the same way her first name did. She had been, more than anything, _Libbyish, _and this adjective was so nebulous that even he, who had coined it just for her, couldn't untangle everything it meant. He could not, for example, figure out why such an unbearably lovely woman—one who had to have been at least ten years his senior, with such an intelligent occupation and carefree smile—had taken a liking to the morbidly obese underachiever with a streak of horrible luck and an eating disorder. Sawyer and Jack and Sayid had all been there, with their easy good looks and rugged demeanors. Had she seen him as a charity case, just another person to counsel and support?

Even in his darkest moments, the times when he hated himself the most, he thought not. There had been some spark, some quality in her or in the space between them that answered his question with a resounding NO. Had she really liked him? It seemed like she did, and not just because she had assured him so with her words. The question then became, did he really like her?

Of course he did. From the moment he had seen her, fumbling with the construction of her shelter, he had felt something that he had never felt for any of the other women on the island. Sure, Kate was attractive, and he'd never pretend that he hadn't taken a few good looks. Claire was cute, and he was fond of her; Shannon possessed a stark and icy beauty, and Sun was the classic, muted type of gorgeous. But when Libby smiled at him, grateful for his assistance with the tarp, none of the others seemed to even exist anymore. Yes, he had liked her from hello, and the feeling had only grown deeper as the days passed. Thinking about it now brought pain, but the worst part was that he couldn't honestly say that the pain was from having actually _loved_ her and then lost her. No, what hurt was the fact that given enough time, he _could _have loved her—just a little longer together, and he would have been there.

Somehow, the loss of someone who he would have soon loved, rather than someone he did love, felt even worse. They were so close to being there, the two of them, despite the world falling apart around them. And then his forgetfulness, his exuberance, his almost-love of her left her bleeding out on a cold floor, two holes punched ragged into her body and coughing up thick black blood. Her hand, feeling so cold and waxy in his, his not-quite-love had stopped her heart along with those bullets. They never even had the chance.

That's when he saw it, nearly obscured by the mist of his wandering subconscious, reflected in or maybe _actually_ _in_ the glass: the curve of a wrist, pale and slender. Just that, and no more. It was confusing enough to make him think that he had imagined it, although the briefly clear, crisp image stood opposed to his rational thought. He was on his feet so fast that he almost managed to knock the armchair over, which was no easy feat. He stumbled to the little table, falling to his knees as he grabbed the glass. Turning it over and over in his hands produced nothing but that unintelligible and mesmerizing swirl of colors: whatever the magic had been, whether true miracle or wishful thinking or descent into delusion, it was gone now. Even so, he found himself unable to relinquish his hold on the object, staring into it just in case the owner of that delicate white wrist decided to show herself once more.

--

It was a late, sleepless night when it happened a second time.

Having just retrieved a carton of cookie dough ice cream from the freezer, he plunked himself down in his armchair. The television was before him, but he tilted his gaze towards the little table and his precious wineglass instead, something he found himself doing more and more often these days. If she of the glass did not reappear tonight, he had decided, then he would just give up. On everything. Part of him, a _big_ part, felt horrible, like he was disgracing her memory, destroying himself when she had poured forth her soul in order to save him. The rest of him felt that either way, she was dead, and that even someone as wise as she wouldn't try to make him remain in the so-called life he was leading now. He knew better, of course—she had believed that he could change, that he could seize his life and better it—but he told himself otherwise, because it made his choice a little easier.

It wasn't like he was planning to commit suicide or anything. That involved a gun, or a razor, or pills—something violent and sudden. Eating until your heart has to work quadruple to pump your blood, and you keel over with a hand to your chest...that wasn't suicide. It was just weakness.

So he kept his eyes on the glass, a spoon sticking out of the frozen dessert container on his lap, and waited. And waited. And waited. An hour passed, then two: nothing. His heart sinking lower and lower into his gut with every passing minute, he began to cry. It was only two or three tears, but it was enough, and he shook with the force of trying to hold the rest of them back. Finally, his renewed grandfather clock tolled midnight, and he allowed more tears to slide down his face as he covered his eyes with one hand. He knew that is was stupid. That it was crazy. And even so, he had _hoped_...he had even come close to _believing. _He thought, for the billionth time, that he should have died instead of her; that if he hadn't forgotten, she would still be alive. Maybe if they had ignored the blanket, she could have even gotten rescued with him, making it the Oceanic Seven. He tried to imagine the two of them back in the real world: would they have stayed together? Moved in together? Maybe they could have gotten a pet...was she a cat person, or a dog person? She seemed like the dog type, but he couldn't be sure, and he'd never have a chance to ask. So many things he'd never have a chance to learn, no matter how much he regretted or how many tears he cried.

He was ready to begin his slow spiral into the promise of death; he only waited to calm his sobbing, his tears falling into the mostly-melted ice cream. Before he could do anything, however, he heard a voice, speaking as though from far away.

_"_–_nt to d_–_"_

The ice cream container smacked into the floor, spilling a sticky, sugary mess across the carpet. Of course he knew the voice; he hadn't heard nearly enough of it for one lifetime, but he could have picked it out of a crowd of yelling strangers with ease. Falling before the glass, he strained his eyes, tears blurring the mass of colors even further. "Please," he whispered. "Oh god, please."

As if in response, a shape began pulling itself from the miring pigment. It took a few moments to make out the fuzzy shape, but once he did, there was no mistaking it: the softly angled plane of a jaw. As he looked closer, it pulled back, and there was more: the gentle swell of a cheek, a small, slightly pinched nose, a fringe of bright eyelash. It became clearer and clearer until finally he had one precious glimpse of a pale liquid green enclosing watery black. An eye. It locked gazes with him, and a single beat later, it all disappeared once more.

_"No!" _he cried, slamming a fist against the floor. Even if it was a delusion, he didn't want it to stop. Although he had feared Charlie when he visited, and Charlie had been his good friend...this was different. It might have been the fact that he still saw himself as having played a principal cause of her death. It might have been the thing that could have developed into love. It might have been something totally different. Whatever it was, he didn't care. He just didn't want it–her–to go away and leave him again. "What are you trying to tell me?" he cried, fresh tears springing forth. "I don't get it. I couldn't hear you." He trembled with the weight of his grief: it was as if she had been brought back to life for one shining moment, and then killed in front of him again. "I don't understand!"

"I said, 'I know you don't want to do this, Hurley'." The voice rang out, soft but clear, in the space behind him. He froze; in spite of how much he had wanted this, he was terrified. "You've come so far. Don't give up now."

He turned to face the speaker; he went so slowly, it felt as if the air around him had turned into molasses. Some part of him was afraid of what he might see. Twin gunshots torn into her guts? Blood splattered from her lips, staining her face, her neck, her teeth? Or, god forbid, rotting as she would be back in her grave, half-covered in her makeshift blanket shroud? If it were possible for her to be speaking to him now, _anything_ might be possible. So when he had at last turned around, his eyes were squeezed shut, and it took him several harsh breaths before he could open them. Finally, he looked.

There she was, standing before him, looking down at where he sat crouched on the floor. She was in her dark jeans and green t-shirt, the same understated outfit she had been wearing on their first date; the same one she was wearing when she was shot, and when she finally gave her last breath. But there was no blood, no wounds, not even a trace of pain to mar her face. Her expression was colder, more distant than it had been in life, but he sensed no ill feeling radiating from her. He drank in her face: the skin gently worn into slight bags beneath her eyes, her thin-ish nose—all these supposed flaws just as beautiful, if not more so, than her best features—the curve of her cheek, the fullness and symmetry of her lips, the perfect angle of her jaw, and of course those eyes.

For a few long moments, he found himself floored, unable to move. When he rose at last and hesitantly approached her, he didn't dare reach out to touch. Something from deep inside himself, beyond where rational thought would dare to tread, told him that to do so would shatter whatever magic had brought her here. A hand stole out, as if to cup the side of her face, but he jerked it back. "Libby?" he murmured, his voice disbelieving even then. "Is it...is it really you?"

Lithely, she stepped closer. "I know you don't really want to die. That's why you can't bring yourself to just end it: you're afraid of death, but you don't know how to deal with your grief, and it's got you stuck." With a flick of one hand, she indicated the spreading puddle of ice cream. "So you go back to your eating disorder, something you've dealt with for most of your life. It's painful, and it's miserable, but it's also familiar. And you try to convince yourself that you're doing it to die, but you're _not._ You're doing it both because it's something you know how to handle, and because you feel that you need to be punished."

He didn't know what to say; he just stood there feeling frightened and ashamed, mouth slightly agape, as her stern words laid into him. "But you _don't,_ Hurley," she finally said, searching his face for a flicker of understanding. "You _don't_ need to be punished. You haven't done _anything_ to deserve what you're putting yourself through. I need you to know that. I don't blame you for my death." At this, he began to sob again, harder this time; he wanted to say so many things, but he couldn't form the words. As he cried, she finally smiled at him: her lips trembled so very slightly, and tears filled her lower eyelids. "I had a good time with you, you know?"

"Libby," he choked, his voice thick. He wanted to believe her, to believe that he didn't deserve this; her words had been able to make him believe anything before, even that someone could love him, see the worth in him. He wanted to tell her so. But he had never been the most articulate guy to begin with, and the crying and surreal nature of the situation just made it so much harder. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to take them, he reached his hands out anyway, as if in supplication.

"I really did," she said, closing her eyes as the tears spilled over. "I'm glad...I'm _so_ glad I had a chance to meet you!" The smile grew wider, holding itself together for a few moments, before her expression crumbled. She wiped at her eyes, slumping her shoulders. "I just wish...that we had a chance...t-to..."

He tried to wait for her to compose herself, he really did, but he wanted to know. He _needed_ to know. "A chance to _what?"_

After taking a few more moments to collect herself, she smiled up at him again, a small laugh escaping the regret. "A chance to drink that wine together."

--

As it turned out, that situation was easily remedied.

When Hurley tried to hand the miraculous glass to her, she shook her head. "I want you to use that one." So he gave her one of the clear, shorter-stemmed glasses from the cabinet instead, being careful not to brush hands, and he himself sipped the Cabernet from the relic that had brought her back.

"So," he said, ignoring the libation in his hand in order to bask in Libby's visage. "Like...what made you come back? Are you really here, or am I just...imagining it?"

She smiled sweetly from over the rim of her glass, sipping at intervals. "You're not drinking." Dutifully, he lifted the glass to his lips and drank of it; he was honestly more of a beer guy, but he didn't think he'd tasted anything better in his life. "I came here because I needed to."

"You _needed_ to? Why? Is it because of me?" He could have hit himself for how egotistical that sounded.

Nibbling at her lower lip, she turned her gaze off to the side, trying not to make eye contact. "It's not something I can just tell you about yet. It doesn't work like that."

He shifted in his seat–now that he wasn't alone, they sat together on the couch–attempting to meet her eyes. "What d'you mean? What doesn't work like that?" He was thoroughly confused; if she was really dead–which he knew she was, he had held onto her as she breathed her last–she should be able to do whatever, right? Ghosts do whatever the hell they please, although that usually seemed to consist of scaring the crap out of people, if the movies he watched were to be believed.

"There are _rules_," she said, almost too quickly.

"Break them?" It came out more like a question than a request.

"It doesn't _work_ like that!" she cried, exasperation edging its way into her voice; Hurley winced, and she gave him an apologetic half-smile. "I mean, it's not a rule you can break. It's not like I've been given some kind of order, and I can choose whether or not I follow it. It's like..." She thought for a moment, eyes rolled up as she considered how best to elucidate. "It's like dropping something. If you were to let go of your glass right now, it would fall down. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't make it fall _upwards_."

"Oh." He looked down at the glass in his hands, moving his hand in a Mobius pattern and watching the wine swish in half-circles. He didn't know what else to say. Dude, what are you _supposed _to say when your dead not-really-girlfriend comes back from the great beyond, and then tells you things that make you even more confused than you were before you heard them?

She studied him, and he felt himself heat up under her gaze. "Look, we don't have to talk about that. It'd just lead us around in circles, and no answers would come of it. I want to hear about _you_, Hurley. What you did with the other survivors since the last time we were together, how you got off the island, what you've been doing since."

"Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you would kind of know all that stuff already." He didn't want to offend her—can you offend the dead?—but he tended to speak whatever was on his mind without thinking overly hard about it. And didn't people suddenly know everything when they died? Omniscience and all that?

Then her smile again—seeing it made him feel richer than when he had first won the lottery, and he thought then that maybe he would have rather been paid by getting to watch her eyes crinkle up at the corners in amusement—and she said something that made him feel as if he were melting like the mess of ice cream on his rug.

"That doesn't mean I don't want to hear it from you. I liked it when you brought me that flower, and told me what had happened when the Others sent you back to the beach...when you told me that you missed me. You can start from there."

Well, after that, there was no way he could have refused anything she requested of him. So he told her everything, not only what had happened, but how he felt about it, and all the times he had done something and wished she were there to experience it with him. And together they drained the bottle of Cabernet, Libby getting drunk much faster than he did because of the weight difference—which honestly surprised him, because before tonight, he hadn't known that ghosts could eat or drink at all, let alone get tipsy.


	2. Chapter of Paint

**Chapter of Paint**

_And I know the moment's near,  
And there's nothing you can do,  
Look through a faithless eye:  
Are you afraid to die?_

_It scares the hell out of me,  
And the end is all I can see._

_- Muse, "Thoughts of a Dying Atheist"_

--

Hurley had never really been much of an artist. Sure, he doodled from time to time, and he liked to do so. But all of his scribblings were imperfect little cartoonish things, childish renderings with no sense of depth or lighting. Nothing that would ever be hung on the walls of any museum, or even purchased from some dinky little sidewalk bazaar. He wasn't talented enough to be something like a classical painter, that was obvious; but beyond that he was also not avant-garde enough to wear a beret and sell questionable modern designs, not consistent enough to market a comic strip, and nowhere near thin enough to be a starving artist.

Even so, he was only mildly surprised by his own actions when he went out and bought that sketchbook. Fifty sheets of acid-free, medium white paper, fourteen by eleven inches. Plus a box of high-quality art pencils, and a sharpener that allowed you to select the desired type of point. None of it ran cheap, but hey, he had to blow through his settlement money somehow, and antiques no longer interested him.

The ones other than the wineglass, that was.

When he returned home, laden with bags full of art supplies, he could smell cooking meat from the kitchen. "Libby?" She wasn't always around—she seemed to come and go with the tide, or the stars, or some other ancient way of measuring time that he had no use for.

"In here," she called back, leaning to peep through the doorway. "I thought I'd make us some dinner: chicken Caesar salad. It's one of my favorites, and I think you'll like it."

He laid the bags down upon the armchair; now that he had company, he always sat on the couch. "Um, I don't think I had all the supplies for that on hand. How'd you get them?"

She turned her attention back to the strips of chicken she was sauteing and smiled.

--

She was right: it was delicious. He didn't know what she had used to season the chicken, but thought that it might be a new favorite for him. Admittedly, he found it a somewhat less filling than what he usually ate, but she seemed completely satiated, so he didn't say anything.

"That was really good," he said, smiling at her. "I've had Caesar salad at restaurants before...not like fast-food places, but close. And it's never tasted like anything special."

She grinned. "You can't expect to get a decent salad from places like that. They only use them as appetizers before the 'real' food comes. If you want a good meal-quality salad, you need to go to a higher-end restaurant, or make it yourself."

"If I ever start, like, craving it, I'll come to you." He doubted that he'd ever crave rabbit food for a full meal, but it _had _been good.

She glanced towards the living room. "It sounded like you were carrying something when you came in. What did you get?"

When he smiled at her again, it was a little awkward and more than a little exuberant, like a child trying to impress a loved one. "It's a surprise," he said, his face going all scrunchy the way it did sometimes when he was very excited. "It's not anything real special, but..."

Pushing her chair back, she stood, gathering up their plates and silverware. "I'm sure I'll love it, Hurley." She placed the dishes in the sink, rinsing them with her back to him before loading them into the dishwasher. "It's from you, after all."

--

"Okay, where do you want me to sit?"

Wordlessly, he indicated the couch. He himself took one of the kitchen chairs and sat across from her. When he withdrew the sketchbook from the bag, she smiled, teeth showing.

"Are you going to _draw_ me?"

He smiled sheepishly, sharpening one of his pencils to a fine point. "Yeah. I'm not very good at it, but...I dunno. It's like, some part of me feels like I should try anyway."

Her smile became closed-mouthed, going from excited to tender. "I'm flattered."

Hurley studied her from over the spiral rings binding the paper, scratching with the pencil in little rough strokes. His tongue protruded from his mouth just slightly, his teeth pressing down on it in concentration. He squinted his eyes and tilted the pad every few minutes, as if to check an angle. And all the while, Libby sat stock-still and studied Hurley in return, hardly blinking, as if she needed to memorize him.

Finally, he looked down from Libby to the pad again, back up to Libby, and back down once more. "Done. I guess." His face was pinkish with hesitation.

She picked her way over to him, grasping the spiral binding of the sketchbook. "Let me see." She turned the pad, and was struck speechless as she looked at it.

It was true that Hurley was never all that great at drawing, and he hadn't gotten any better since be bought the supplies, either. Sketched out, filling up the page, was a picture of Libby. The lines were rough and even shaky at points, the art itself full of the childish feeling of a piece that tries for proper proportion and anatomy but fails. Both the shading and lighting were poor. But all the faults were elaborate, and looking closer, she could even see that the couch he had drawn her seated upon was just a few hastily-drawn lines, while all the detail of the piece was contained in his rendering of her. All of her own flaws—the bags under her eyes, the boniness of her hands, the way her hair always frizzed up just enough to make her look like she had just rolled out of bed—were rendered just as carefully as her qualities, and it was obvious that he treasured, loved, and strove to recreate them just the same.

"Oh, _Hurley_," she finally breathed, covering her mouth with one hand. "It's beautiful."

"You don't have to lie, if that's what you're doing. I know I'm pretty bad at it."

"No, I mean it," she insisted. "It's not _technically _good, but it has...it has such a _warmth _to it. It's more alive than most technically good pieces I've seen. I don't know how else to describe it."

"I'm not exactly some, like...Van Gogh, or anything." He wanted to list more painters, but he honestly couldn't think of another one who had created portraits. Monet was landscapes, right? "This looks like a sixth-grader made it. I don't really see the warmth, or alive...ness, or whatever it is that you're getting."

"It's more alive than I am." Although she said it in a gentle tone, trying to get him to face reality, he still blanched. "I'm sorry Hurley, I'm not trying to make you upset. It just feels like you're letting me live again, through your eyes. Through your drawing."

He remained silent, unsure of what to say. "Uh..."

"I'm trying to tell you that I like it. You need to learn to take a compliment," she teased, releasing her hold on the sketch pad.

"Uh...thank you." His face flushed redder, and he scrunched his mouth, embarrassed.

"Thank _you_." She reached as if to lay her hand on his shoulder, but pulled back in midair, as if remembering that it was some sort of strange taboo. "I think it's one of the best presents I've ever received." Her hand remained partially raised, at the level of her breasts, but away from Hurley. "I hope you'll decide to make more."

Of course, that's exactly what he did.

--

Sometimes he even drew without her there to model for him, because he could recall so vividly much of the time they had spent together. He would sit there, pencil in hand, and draw scenes from what little past they shared.

Once, he thought back to one of the times they had done laundry together in the hatch. A few of their items had gotten mixed up, and as he was sorting his clothing, he found himself holding a pair of thong panties, tiny and white and lacy as a snowflake. He was embarrassed to be holding her underwear, and even more embarrassed to know that she wore things like _that,_ the knowledge making him feel ways he shouldn't have felt about a woman like her.

"I think these are yours," he had said awkwardly, dangling the delicate little pair of underwear from the tip of one finger. He was afraid that she would be humiliated too, creeped out by the fat guy manhandling her unmentionables.

Instead, she had snatched them back casually, and without missing a beat, replied: "Are you sure they're not yours?"

It had taken him a second to realize that she was making a joke; whenever anyone had made a joke that referenced his weight, even obliquely, he had always felt some measure of self-loathing somewhere deep inside. But he didn't feel that then. If she was poking fun, it was in a way that suggested she didn't care. That she realized he was fat, _really_ fat, and still didn't see anything worthy of mocking. He had smiled at her, and she had returned the expression.

The day he recalled that was the day that he drew the two of them doing laundry in the Swan. When she returned to him, he watched her look the new drawing over for a minute or so before bringing it up. "You really never cared that I was so fat?"

She continued looking at the drawing, and even now, in death, she refused to miss a beat. "_You_ never cared that I was so much older than you."

"That's, like...different."

"I don't see how." She smiled as she handed the picture back. "This is good too. You really are better than you give yourself credit for."

He opened his mouth to ask her if she was talking about his artistic skill or himself in general, but decided not to spoil what might be a really good thing; and so his question went unasked.

--

For a long while, everything he drew—whether she was there to model or not—was something that had actually happened. The two of them doing laundry, the two of them jogging, Libby trying and failing to get her shelter set up. Eventually, however, he ran out of situations to recreate. After all, they had only known each other for a matter of days, and he hadn't experienced nearly enough of his life with her to recreate infinite scenarios.

This sent him into a funk, and he didn't draw for days. If she wasn't modeling, he preferred to draw things that he had actually seen himself at one point; he was worried that his art would get even worse if he didn't have a reference to go by. Libby never tried to prod him back into working, seeming to prefer waiting patiently, quietly, for him to get his act together on his own time. She had always been so patient with him: telling him not to worry about how tired he got jogging, because he would get better at it; supporting him even when he revealed his hidden stash of food; talking him back down into reality when he was delusional and ready to kill himself.

_And don't tell me you made me up. It's insulting._

He had felt, for so long, that he had known her from somewhere. Once he had thought it was because she was a product of his lonely imagination. Lately, he was coming to think that maybe it was some inner part of him trying to let him know that he'd found _the one. _Maybe when you'd finally found your soul mate, it seemed like deja vu. He'd liked other women, sure, but he'd never felt that way when he was around Starla.

Maybe he had been meant for Libby, and she for him. If things had turned out differently, they could have had time to love each other. Instead, one act of forgetfulness on his part had placed her in the line of fire. She had kept him from going back for the blankets, telling him to obtain some wine back at their camp. If he hadn't agreed, he would be the one left to bleed out on the floor, and she might have been rescued instead. Would she have placed a flower on his grave, if their positions had been reversed?

No, she might not have shown any signs of disappointment when he ceased his drawings, but she had loved them so much. He would deny her nothing in an attempt to atone for what had happened; he didn't want to let her down this time.

When he went back to the art supply store, he stocked up on different things. The total cost came to a whole lot more than it had the first time, but oil paints don't come cheap, and that wasn't even counting the palettes, canvasses and brushes; the sealants, drop cloths and primer. And most of all, the easel itself, a polished wood structure that actually struck him as being sort of creepy looking without anything on it.

After setting up and priming the canvas, he went right to work with the paints, not bothering to outline a rough sketch first. He wasn't going to paint anything that needed to remain true to an actual event, so what was the point? _He_ couldn't see one. The pigments found their way onto his skin, his clothes, even his curly hair, which he had neglected to tie back. Before long, he looked like an enormous autumn leaf sharing its colors with a stretched canvas. And when Libby arrived, silently and inexplicably as always, that's how she found him: smeared with bold colors, standing before a painting of the sun setting on a beach.

There, seated upon the sand, was a couple with their backs to the observer. The man, who was much bigger, had his arm around the woman, one hand upon her shoulder; the woman was leaned in close to him, her head resting against his chest and her long blonde hair tied back into a messy ponytail.

--

When the collection of drawings and paintings became too numerous, Libby suggested obtaining frames in order to mount the pencil sketches along with the paintings. It seemed like a good idea at first, but the constant framing was a hassle, and most of the fifty sketches ended up simply being thumbtacked to the walls. Others were stuck to the refrigerator with magnets. The few that ended up framed were placed on tables, cabinets, any available flat surface. Over there, on the end table next to his bed, was the picture he had drawn of their first 'laundry date', and above the rack by the door where he hung his keys was the tacked-up rendering of the time he had assisted her with the tarp, back when she was still a relatively new arrival to the beach camp.

The paintings, however, were what took up most of the available wall space. They varied in size and color scheme, but all consisted of either Libby alone or with himself. The first one, _Couple And Sunset, _hung above the couch where they often sat together. _Caf__é__ in Paris _had its place above the kitchen table. A rather small canvas, titled _Libby Asleep, _hung above and behind the wineglass itself. The fictional situations abounded: out for a ride along the coast in his yellow Hummer; holding hands in a movie theater; supporting her as she sat atop his shoulders, laughing aloud; picnicking in a forest clearing. He had tried to paint the two of them having a picnic on the beach, the way it should have been, but the sadness and regret was too much for him to bear.

There was even one titled _Boarding Flight 815, _the only work of non-fiction among his painted renderings: it showed him, covered in sweat, boarding the airplane and unknowingly stepping on her foot. Despite being just as good as the rest of his pieces, this one in particular gave him an uneasy feeling, like he had forgotten to include an important detail; after scrutinizing it up close and finding nothing out of place, he chose to ignore the niggling sensation in the back of his mind and mounted it above the television set.

Libby herself seemed thrilled with every single one of his works; if she found any of his immature renderings of her unflattering, she was damn good at hiding it. She had been around more often and for longer stretches of time than she had been before. Aside from that, there were also some subtle but distinct changes in her appearance. It wasn't like she had ever looked sickly before, but she seemed somehow healthier now; he'd be damned if he could figure out how it was possible for a ghost to do so, but it looked like she had actually put on weight since she first appeared from the glass. Not that he minded in the least, of course—nothing in the world could possibly make her less gorgeous to him—and it actually made her appear less fragile, her hands in particular softening. Her hair seemed more wavy than frizzy. The bags under her eyes smoothed and dissipated slightly, and although she had always glowed from within the moment he first glanced at her on the beach, her radiance seemed even brighter lately.

If she had been alive, he would have merely thought of it as settling into the mundane happiness of a comfortable relationship. Since she wasn't, it made him almost nervous, though he couldn't quite put his finger on why. Of course, he said nothing to her about it–he only wanted to provide her with the life she should have been living, and his affection...if she desired it.

--

She was there when he set a fresh canvas on his easel, sitting down to think, and he asked her to model for him again. He wanted to create a picture of the two of them celebrating something, and her refreshed beauty was something he wanted to accurately capture. "So, do you, um, celebrate Christmas?" He had almost asked _are you a Christian, _but thought better of it. If he asked that, and she wasn't one, he didn't want her to think that it mattered to him. She could worship Elvis flying around in an alien spacecraft somewhere, or nothing at all, and it wouldn't make him think of her any differently.

"I did," she said, standing before the easel. When Hurley asked the rare question about her everyday life, he used the present tense, and she always answered in past. "But I kind of have a request, if that's alright with you."

"What?"

"I was wondering if you could paint something based on Halloween." She smiled at him, almost shyly, nibbling her bottom lip.

He smiled back, genuinely amused, and snickered. "Dude, no way, you like that little kid holiday?"

She flashed him a fake-incensed look, narrowing her eyes. "If you're trying to tell me that you _don't _enjoy a holiday based on dressing up in weird costumes and running around at night for free candy, I'm going to have to call you a liar."

His smile broke all the way through, becoming a grin. "Fair enough." He twisted the brush between his lips and teeth, wondering what color to begin with. "I have no clue what I'd go as. I haven't dressed up for Halloween since I was like, twelve."

"So pick something _cool_. And I don't mean cool to the adult you, I mean something that you would have loved to wear back when you were a twelve-year old."

He pondered for half a minute before busting out into laughter. "What? What did you come up with?"

"It's kinda stupid," he warned.

"Come on, tell me. I won't laugh."

"A Jedi."

It didn't take long for her to break her promise and laugh anyway, but her merriment was appreciative, not mean. "You would make an _excellent_ Jedi," she giggled. "Hurley Skywalker."

"The one and only," he said, about to dip his brush in the paint. Then he realized something, and paused to look back up at her. "So, uh, what do _you_ want to be?"

She didn't even pause to think, as if this was something she had given a great deal of thought to before even bringing the idea up with him. "A nurse." The curve of her lips no longer suggested amusement, he noticed, but he couldn't quite figure out what kind of smile it _was_.

--

The night he hung the Halloween painting above the kitchen stove, Libby was preparing dinner again. This time, it was eggplant Parmesan with garden salad on the side. He wasn't sure, because he hadn't really checked, but it seemed like he had lost a little weight since she began picking the menu and portion sizes; he felt lighter, in any case. She stood at the counter, quickly and efficiently chopping carrots into thin strips as he straightened the canvas and stepped back to make sure it was level.

"There," he said, feeling accomplished. He looked to her for approval just as she looked up to see the painting; he clearly observed her hand slip, almost as if the world was going in slow motion, and then she had brought the knife down upon one of her fingers.

He was rushing to her instantly, reaching out to take her hand in his and check it over, but she gasped and rapidly backed away, knocking the knife to the floor in the process. Her hands were held up and back at the level of her face, and there was fear in her eyes. He knew why she had moved away, of course he did, it had been stupid to try and reach for her in the first place...and still, he felt a crushing rejection settle upon his heart, and it must have showed in his face.

"We can't," she ventured; he could tell that she was trying to convey the reality of the situation without hurting him, but he couldn't help the way it made him feel. His eyes drifted from her face to the hand she had injured, and although he had seen her bring the knife down hard enough to cut herself, there was no blood. Peering closer, he _did_ see the split where blade had met flesh, but it was pale and dry. His heart broke as he fully realized once more what that meant: she was dead, dead and gone, and they would never, ever be together again in the real world.

When he tried to speak, he found that his mouth had suddenly gone dry. "There's got to be a way."

"You're not dying on me, Hurley."

"No. I mean, like a way to get around the rules. A loophole." When a handful of seconds had gone by without an answer or even a change of facial expression from her, he knew that he must have guessed correctly. "What is it?"

Her mouth tightened. "It's not pleasant."

"I can handle it. Whatever it is."

She softened. "I know you could, Hurley. I have faith in you. But it's not a question of whether or not you _can_ handle it. It's a question of whether or not you _should have to_."

"I want to do it."

"It's going to be painful." When he opened his mouth to reply, she moved her hand forward in a gesture for him to keep silent. "And I don't mean physical pain. It's going to hurt you inside, and it could tear you apart."

He knew what she meant: he could go crazy, lose himself in delusion once more. But who could say that she wasn't a delusion herself, just a product of his guilt and fear? "What do I have to do?"

"We're close now. I wasn't going to tell you, because I didn't want you to get hurt. But what you've done so far has brought us to the final step. All you need to do is paint one more picture." Her words made it sound so simple, but her eyes told him a different story.

"Of what?"

"Of me. I'll model for you, and you will paint me. But you have to paint from reality again, not fantasy. You need to paint me exactly as I am."

"Dude," he breathed. Something about all this was frightening him out of his mind. He thought that maybe some small part of his brain fully grasped what she was asking him to do, but if it did, he was blocking it out and allowing himself just a few minutes more of blissful ignorance. "I can do what I did before, when you modeled the first time. But there's _no_ way I can make it look realistic."

"You don't have to worry about that. I can lend you somebody else's talent this once."

"You can do that? Can all..." He wanted to ask her, but he wasn't going to refer to her as a ghost aloud.

"No." She knew what he had tried to ask and answered anyway. "I guess you'd call it a special case, but it's all because of coincidence. Because of everything that happened, I had a sort of bond with an artist." She bit her lip, and then corrected herself. "A _failed_ artist. You're not the first person I visited." His face fell further, if that was even possible. "It's not like _that,_ Hurley, believe me. I couldn't come to you directly; there needed to be a conduit. But with him...he left a channel open that he couldn't close, and I guess you could say I 'borrowed' his skill from him."

If he had been in a situation where he could give what she had said a bit more thought, he might have made the connections and realized what she was getting at. As it was, he only found himself more confused. "Isn't he gonna realize that his ability or whatever isn't there anymore?"

"No," she said, turning her attention to the food she had been preparing once more. "He'll never have the chance to realize anything."

--

"Are you ready?"

She stood before him, hands clasped to hold the wine glass in front of her. He had his paints and brushes ready, but hesitated to put them to work. "I'm not sure I get what I'm supposed to do."

"Just paint what you see, right now. When you think you've finished, you'll start up again, and then you'll paint what you need to see."

"Okay, now I _really_ don't get it."

"Just paint me as I am right this minute. The second part will happen on its own." She blinked at him, her face sympathetic. "Just _trust_ me, Hurley."

Because he _did_ trust her—implicitly, in fact—he dipped his brush and set to work. It was obvious almost immediately that he had improved drastically, and while he was still no master of the arts, proportion and scaling came almost effortlessly. There was the pale peachy tone of Libby's skin, the leaf-green of her shirt, the glass-green of her eyes reflecting the light. The shadows and highlights weren't perfect, but they were close enough for government work. Folds added themselves to her shirt and jeans, and stray hairs conjured themselves from the end of his thinnest brush. More shine was added to her seashell-perfect fingernails and her lips, and the swell of her bosom was defined. He found that the less he concentrated on the details, the better they came out, and before long, there was only one thing left to add: the glass that she held. In a few sweeps of color, it was done, and he stepped back to survey the final product.

Just as he was thinking that it hadn't been painful at all, that Libby must have been wrong, he noticed that he had, in fact, gotten the reflection of the light in her eyes all wrong. How could he have missed something so obvious? It was a quick fix, but for some reason, it aggravated him. No, more than that. It set him on edge.

Grabbing a clean brush, he reduced the shine, dimming the tone of the picture and changing the angle and distance of the light source at the same time. But then the gloss coming off her hair, off her lips and nails, was all wrong. It was corresponding to the first version of the light source instead. Just as he had fixed those problems, he decided that he hadn't captured her expression correctly at _all._

As his work became more furious, Libby merely continued to study him in silence.

He had finished changing her expression, and although the Libby standing in front of him didn't look at all shocked or agonized like the one in the painting, it felt somehow more _right_ than it had before. In fact, he found that he didn't need to look up at Libby anymore at all; that he could do this without needing to reference her in the slightest. He progressed onward, and as he began working on refining the glass in her hands, he drifted off into the memory of a conversation from what seemed like the distant past.

"_What's going on with you and Libby?"_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_Look, Tubby, you're holding up the line. We both know you're never gonna get past doin' laundry with her, so how 'bout you back off and let a real man show her what's what."_

_"Well, it just so happens, Frogurt, that I'm way_ _past laundry. Yeah, that's right—__I got a date with Libby_ _right now. We're goin' on a picnic."_

_"You've got a date."_

_"Yeah. I'm getting the wine. She's getting the blankets."_

It was something that he hadn't allowed himself to think about too deeply since she had died, and that troubled him. Why now? Why, right this very moment, when he had important corrections to make? He pushed it from his mind, and focusing clearly once more, he got to take a good, hard look at his current correction-in-progress: while he had been off inside his own head, he had changed the position of her hands, clenching now so tightly that their painted veins stood out. And the glass was no longer a glass, but a large, soft smudge of light blue. Almost as if he was outside his own body, he watched his own hand add detail to the blue blob, until it became obvious that he was imitating the texture of fabric.

He could have sworn that he felt his blood turn to ice water, and he looked up to check her but Libby herself was still holding the glass. All the while, as he looked her up and down to make sure nothing had changed, his hand was moving across the canvas of its own accord. Her face looked so very sad, and he felt as if he would crack under the weight of her despair.

"Libby..." he called softly, finding his eyes drawn back to the painting despite his concern. There was a new addition since he had last looked: an large and unclear blackish blotch in one lower corner. Squinting his eyes, he decided that it must be something too close to the foreground to be seen clearly, as if it were a snapshot rather than a painting in which all horizon lines could be rendered clear.

It wasn't until he had finished adding the highlights, shining the way only something metallic could, that he realized it was a gun. And by then, it was too late.

_"No." _Even as he uttered this, a near-whispered refusal to accept what was unfolding before him, he slapped his brush back into the black paint once more. Then, jamming it toward the canvas, he created two jagged-edged spots on the blanket she was carrying, in quick succession: one, two.

Two gunshots rang out in his living room, but he knew that none of his neighbors would call for help: he doubted if anyone else had even heard them.

_"LIBBY!" _he shouted, panicking, and when he snapped his eyes up to her, she was crying. He wanted to throw his supplies down, to overturn the easel and run to her and just try to hold her until he died too, but something was keeping him there. He couldn't even begin to fight, he was so devastated.

"Oh god, Hurley, I'm so sorry." The glass she held was intact, but there were two ragged holes punched into her stomach, trickling blood.

"Why?!" he sobbed, not even trying to keep his composure. "Libby, _why?" _If he could just get to her, if he could just place his hands over her wounds to stop the blood, maybe she wouldn't die this time.

"You need to see," she whispered, pain saturating her voice. "So that you can accept that I'm dead. You need to see it as it happened, and I'm not an artist; I couldn't have shown you from my point of view, because I don't have any skill to lend. There was only one other person who saw..."

The gun in the corner, viewed right up close; the person Libby had visited before him, the artist. It all fell into place.

"This is _Michael's_." Halfway between a statement and a question. "I'm recreating this as _Michael_."

"I'm sorry," she said, pleading. "It's so damn _cruel._ But this is what you wanted..."

His tears dripped onto his palette, mixing into the colors. He had covered the entire canvas and the picture it bore in white paint while he was talking to her, and now, he started to paint her anew. This time she was laid out upon the floor, eyes and mouth closed; she looked as if she might have been asleep, she seemed so peaceful. And then came his brush once more, arching her back, opening her eyes, and parting her lips. He stained her teeth and lips a dark red, the pigment dripping down her painted chin, before slopping more paint onto the brush and swinging it before the canvas, splattering the angry color across her neck, her shirt, and the floor beneath her.

The real Libby (was she? _really?) _gave a wet, hacking cough, and Hurley was able to look up just in time to see her vomit up the blood from her torn insides. It flew out in a gruesomely thick rope, some splashing into the glass she still held, and she gave a series of sobbing moans as she screwed her eyes up in apparent agony. Her knees buckled, but she remained upright even then.

There hadn't been enough blood before to trigger his usual reaction, but there was now. He felt his knees buckle as well, but he actually crashed to the floor, landing woozily. He thought he would pass out—he actually _hoped_ he would pass out—but he couldn't. Whatever was going on, it wouldn't give him a quick way out. Instead, finding it was all he could do, he turned his head to the side and retched, bringing up the food she had cooked especially for them.

He knelt like that, all weepy and crouched beside his puddle of sick, until she called to him. "It's almost over, Hurley. I'm so, so damn sorry. If you can't forgive me—"

"It took this long?" he asked, cutting her off before she could finish. "You were in so much pain, for _this long? _You weren't, like...you weren't passed out from then until I came?_"_

"Yes," she said, her voice shaking and thick with her life's blood. "I kept drifting in and out, but I was awake for a lot of it. Jack knew there was nothing he could do for me, but he tried to ease my suffering. He took a syringe." She swallowed painfully. "Injected me with heroin."

He made a small, pathetic sound somewhere in the back of his throat at her final statement, and if there had been anything left in his stomach, he would have thrown up again. Even Jack, their surgeon-leader and hero, had decided that trying to save her wouldn't do a thing: she had been good as dead from the moment those shots were fired. "Did they...did they clean you up before I got there?"

"Yes," she said again, and he still couldn't bring himself to look up at her. "They cleaned the blood off my face, and they stayed with me until you arrived. There was nothing they could do for Ana...she had already died by the time they found us."

"How...how did it..." He kept breaking up his sentences with sobs, and it hurt so very much to ask these questions, but he needed to know, and he'd never get up the courage to ask again. "How did it happen?"

"I walked in as he was looking down on Ana; she was already dead, and he still had the gun pointed in her direction. I didn't know what was going on...Michael had been missing to search for Walt, and then just he was standing there, holding a gun with Ana slumped over on the couch. I was shocked, and I didn't know what to do. So I called his name."

_She didn't even know. She was afraid, and she was confused, and she yelled his name. _"And he just stayed there? He just let you bleed?"

She nodded. "He didn't know I was still alive. If he had, he probably would have shot me again, or placed something over my face to suffocate me."

Finally, shaking from the force of his sorrow, he looked up into her bloodstained face: she had moved to stand only a few feet before him. "You tried to warn us. The last thing you said was 'Michael'...and we thought you were checking to see if he was okay. And your face, it was so horrified, and you just kept trying to get up enough strength to try again..." He trailed off, face screwed up, as he tried to finish that thought aloud.

"That's how you died." He finally said it, finally admitted in front of her that she was dead. "If we had realized, maybe you could have, like...died at peace. Maybe you would have gotten to say goodbye."

He bent over again, weeping harder, and she bent down to kneel in front of him, placing the glass off to one side. "There's no way you could have known. Michael was your friend—there was no reason for you to think he had done anything." He was finally able to drop his palette and brush, and clapped his paint-stained hands to his face in response. "You need to stop blaming yourself. _It is not your fault." _She spoke each word of that final sentence clearly and distinctly.

"I-if...if I hadn't fuh-forgotten—"

"Okay, yes, that's true. If you hadn't forgotten the blankets, I wouldn't have been there, and I wouldn't have died. I'll accept that. But if _I_ had turned around and snuck out for help instead of letting Michael know I was there, I also wouldn't have died. And if we had just had the picnic without the blankets, or done something else, I wouldn't have died. And if I hadn't been on that flight, I wouldn't have been on the island, and I'd still be alive. Do you understand what I'm telling you? There is _no_ way you can prevent everything, or even most things. Can you accept _that?"_

A strangled sound emerged from him. "There's no way you can ever come back."

"You know that, Hurley. You've known that all along. But can you live with it?"

"I don't even know if you're just in my head right now!"

"Can you live with that, too? Can you move on and accept it?"

For a minute or two, the only response from him was more tears. Finally, when it felt as if there was no more water left in him to cry out, he slumped, defeated. More than that: accepting. "Yeah," he said, his voice raspy and hollow. "Yeah, I guess I kinda have to, don't I?"

When he felt her hand slide across his face to cup his cheek, he was shocked into sitting upright. Right there, in front of him, was Libby as she had been before the final painting: radiant, healthy, clean. Tears still trailed down her face, but she was smiling and her eyes were sparkling. The millionaires and billionaires of the world, without her before them, were poor men as far as he was concerned.

"I'm so _proud_ of you!" she exclaimed, and he realized that her tears at that very moment were ones of joy. His eyes widened as he gazed at her, unable to believe that she was touching him, actually _touching_ him there and then. She stroked his cheek with her thumb, tracing circles on his skin, and all at once he found himself seizing her and crushing her to him as if he were afraid that she would disappear the moment they broke contact. Her arms curled around his neck as he buried his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of her, and despite how cried out he had felt before they were soon crying again in each other's arms.

--

When it came time to clean up the mess he had made, he took the final painting down to the basement and shoved it into the incinerator. He didn't even bother giving it a title.

He didn't need it anymore.


	3. Chapter of Dreams

**Chapter of Dreams  
**

_This is the last night you'll spend alone, __  
Look me in the eyes so I know you know  
__I'm everywhere you want me to be.  
__The last night you'll spend alone,  
__I'll wrap you in my arms and I won't let go,  
I'm everything you need me to be._

_- Skillet, "The Last Night"_

--

"So, um...do you like cats, or dogs?"

The two of them were seated together, Hurley resting one hand on the arm of the couch. His other hand was interlaced with Libby's; she was sort of half-sitting, half-sprawled, leaning herself against his side. Playing on the television was one of those classic lowbrow comedies that everyone and their brother has seen half a thousand times: _Caddyshack, _or _The Jerk, _or maybe _Groundhog Day. _Whatever it was, it was a guy movie, and he doubted she was actually paying attention, which was alright with him, because he wasn't, either. He was too focused on the feel of her hand in his, the way she seemed to try and sink into him when they watched films together, and all the questions he was still trying to work up the guts to ask her.

She took a moment to think it over. "Both," she finally answered, "but I think I like dogs better."

"Me too," he agreed, and she looked up and over at him to find that he was smiling. She smiled back before snuggling her head against him once more. "I like the little dogs, chihuahuas and other ones like that. I'm not picky about breeds. But I like the small ones you can, like, pick up and hold in your lap. They're really cute." He wasn't concerned about how that might reflect upon his masculinity: Libby was a shrink, and she would know better than to pay attention to that stereotype.

"They _are_ cute, but I tend to prefer the big, friendly dogs—labs or retrievers, mostly. They'll be everyone's best friend, but if their owner is in danger, they'll protect them with their life. And they're so much fun to play around with. I think they're just as adorable in their own way, and they're so eager to just be around you."

"Oh," he said, and they were silent again for a half a minute or so before Libby laughed aloud. "What?"

"I was just thinking," she said, squeezing his hand, "about what kind of dogs we like."

"Yeah?"

"It just hit me that maybe our preferences say a lot about us."

He glanced down to find a mischievous grin on her face. "How?"

She slapped at his arm playfully with her free hand, as if to scold him for not getting the joke. "About us _as a couple."_

When she put it like that, it only took him a second or two to realize what she was implying. "Dude!" he laughed, mock-indignant, and pretended to push her off him. She only laughed harder and tried to push him back. "Not gonna work," he teased, nabbing her and holding her still against him with one arm. "A big dog and a little dog get into a shoving match, the big dog's gonna win every time."

"Who says?" She grabbed his arm and attempted to lift it away, but he merely employed his other arm to help keep her down.

"The big dog."

She kicked and squirmed around for a while before huffing and resigning herself to her fate. "Fine, you win. _This_ time."

"Told ya." He placed a kiss on the top of her head. "Have you been paying attention to the movie?"

"No," she confessed, settling her back more comfortably against his chest. "And I don't think you have, either. So next time, I get to pick."

"Crap. I should have at least pretended like I was." He injected false despair into his voice, to make it seem as if he dreaded her taste in films.

"And _that_ is how the little dog wins," she declared triumphantly.

--

"There is _no way _you've never heard of this movie."

"You can keep not believing me, but I have absolutely no idea what it's even about." She had somehow obtained a DVD from Blockbuster. He assumed that she got it the same way she bought some of their groceries, but he didn't ask how. It was one of those things he instinctively knew she wouldn't be able to answer, and bringing it up would just lead to another argument. "Are Harold and Maude supposed to be like Bonnie and Clyde, or Thelma and Louise?"

Having just placed the disk in the DVD player, she grabbed the remote and plonked herself down on the couch next to him. She seized the case he held, and whacked him gently with it. "Neither. And I'm not going to tell you about who they _are _like_, _or it'll spoil the whole movie." She grinned at him, winking. "I forgot that this came out before your time."

"You couldn't have been old enough to watch this then. Whatever it is, I know you didn't pick out some Disney cartoon."

"At least I was born before it was made," she shot back, selecting 'play movie' from the on-screen menu. "And it's not a kid's movie. It's a love story."

"Are you subjecting me to a romantic comedy?"

"Do you have _any_ faith in my cinematic taste? No, of course not, although it would be the perfect payback for that buddy comedy we had to sit through. This is simply a love story, and I think you'll be able to appreciate it."

The titles started up. "Do you want me to make us some popcorn or something before it gets going?"

"We're going to be laughing and crying too hard to eat anything. Trust me."

He had severe doubts about the ability of some old movie about two people in love to make him laugh or cry, but he shrugged and settled back to watch it sans popcorn anyway.

--

By the end of the film, he had to wipe the tears from his face.

"Did you like it?" she inquired gently, wiping her own eyes. "No matter how many times I see it, it still gets to me."

"Yeah." His voice was gruff, and he cleared his throat to banish the tears from his voice. "It was awesome." The depressed and troubled kid finding his true love in an joyfully enigmatic older woman who was running out of time...Libby was so tender sometimes that he could hardly stand it. The ending, although beautiful, wasn't something he wanted to dwell on. Maybe not all the Harolds in the world wanted to let go and live life without their Maudes. Maybe if _that_ Harold had been crazy enough to see people that weren't there, he could've brought _his_ Maude back, too.

"Yeah," she agreed, repositioning herself to face him and tucking her legs up underneath her rear. "Yeah, it really was." Both of her hands found a perch along his forearm, and her lips found safe harbor against his.

--

It had been a few days since they had watched _Harold and Maude, _and Hurley had taken the time to think it over. How long had Maude and Harold known each other in the movie, anyway? Hadn't it only been a week? Yeah, that sounded right: they had met and fallen in love in only seven days, and then Maude had died. Harold was young and immature, but he had known it for what it was, and was ready to propose to her that very day. He told her how he felt before she died. They had even made love, soaking in the afterglow and blowing soap bubbles.

Harold might have barely been a man, but Hurley thought the kid had gotten a lot more of it right than he himself had.

That's when he decided that his current inertia just wasn't going to cut it anymore. He had wasted his first chance, and he would never be able to make up for it no matter what he did...but maybe, just maybe, he could show her what he _would_ have done, if he had only known. He only wished that he wasn't scared to death of trying.

So one day, as Libby sat at the kitchen table reading a book, he came up behind her and bent to wrap his arms around her shoulders.

"Hurley," she laughed playfully, laying one of her fingers inside the pages to keep her place. "What is it?" When he responded by placing a kiss just above her collarbone, she started, her jolt sending the paperback out of her hands and skittering a short distance across the linoleum floor.

"We can't." She pulled forward, pushing herself against the table, and he released her, startled by her reaction. "We can't do this."

He looked at her, arched over the table with the errant hairs that had escaped her ponytail hanging in her face, and shook his head. "This isn't one of those rules you talked about, is it." He stated this more than he asked it, knowing already that he was right.

"No." Her voice was low and hollow.

He chuckled half-heartedly, backing away from her. "I guess I should've known." A hand reached up, entangling itself in his kinky locks as he held the side of his head. "I mean, a girl like you, and a guy like me..." He didn't want to believe that she had lied to him that day on the cliff's edge. She had stepped right up to stand there by him, even though he was acting crazy and willing to pitch himself over the side, even though he could have easily taken her down with him. Maybe she really _had_ taken a liking to him, enough to initiate a kiss and hug him and hold his hand, but it wasn't the same when the lights went down and the clothes came off, was it? When it meant that the two of them would be pressed together, naked as they were born with nothing in between them, the whole game plan changed. He felt gutted, of course, but he shouldn't have honestly held out the hope of it happening.

"It's not like that. It's not that I don't want to, you have to believe me."

"Oh yeah? Then why don't you tell me what it _is_ like, Libby?" Against his better instinct, he found himself getting angry. He knew that she had come back from the dead to spend time with him, and to watch old movies, and cook for them, and sit with him; and he should have been grateful, but at that moment he wasn't. Instead he felt jerked around yet again, this time by the one person whom he had come to trust wouldn't put him through that.

"Can't we just stay like this?" she whispered, still hunched over the table. "Like we are right now?"

"We're not _like_ _anything," _he protested. "We're not going anywhere."

"I know you _think_ you want this, Hurley. But you don't. It might spoil everything, and I want the time we have together to be happy."

The way she said that, as if their days together were numbered, chilled him. "It wouldn't spoil anything." He moved forward again to lay a hand on her shoulder. "I...I like you a _lot,_ Libby."

"You like what you know of me," she said, and she began to shiver. "If we do this now, you'll hate me even more when it comes time for me to go."

"Hey," he said softly; she seemed so frightened, and her attempt at an explanation worried him. When he drew her close and enfolded her in his arms, she didn't object. For the first time in his life, he was glad for all his bulk as he tried to make her feel warm and safe and protected. "You're not going anywhere, so you don't have to worry about that. And I swear, no matter what it is you're trying to get at, that I could never hate you."

"You need a real relationship, with a real live person. You can't expect me to stay here with you for the rest of your life. It isn't _healthy_. This is a stage you're going through, like the stage before your last painting. The time will come when you don't need me to be here anymore."

"I'll _always_ need you. I don't want you to leave me, ever again."

"You're not always going to feel that way. And that's _okay! _Grieving is a process, and little by little, you'll be able to let me go. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't change the way you felt about me."

"The way I _feel," _he insisted, stressing the present tense.

"Doing what you're asking of me, right now, it would only make it harder for you to move on. And regardless of whether you want to move on or not, you _need_ to. And you _will. _When that time comes, I don't want you to think of me and feel pain over who I was."

"Back on the island, when I was gonna jump off that cliff, I said that you didn't know me, and you said that you were starting to." A hitching breath came from her throat, and he turned her around, pulling her upright to look at him. "And when I told you about those two people that died, and about Dave, you didn't run away. Well, now I want to start getting to know _you_. And I promise," he said, cupping her face this time, "I'm not gonna hate you. I'll always—"

She laughed tearfully, interrupting him and tilting her head. "You're such a good person. You don't deserve...you never deserved any of this."

"Neither do you. You didn't deserve to die. And if you want to wait, we'll wait. I'm not trying to, like...force you into anything. I just need to be near you. That's enough for me."

She squinched her eyes and mouth shut, lips trembling, and a few small tears dripped from her lashes. When she finally looked back into his eyes, she only spoke one word. It was only two syllables long, and he had heard it constantly throughout his life from an infinite number of people, but the feeling and power contained in it when spoken by her at that moment moved him. Maybe, he considered, it was the other two-syllable word that she _didn't _use which was most significant.

"Hugo."

This time, he leaned in to comfort and assure _her _with a kiss. When her lips parted, he was no longer frightened of how she might react, or if she would leave at some point down the road. The hand that wasn't on her cheek pressed against the small of her back, and she rolled onto the balls of her feet to gain some extra height when she wove her arms about his neck.

--

She had let him pick her up and carry her into the bedroom with her legs wrapped around him, interrupting their kissing only to breathe, and set her down on the edge of the bed. The button and zipper of her jeans were hastily undone, and the pair was off in a flash. She took off her own top, and assisted him when he fumbled with the hooks keeping her bra cinched, but when he tried to slip off her panties, she moved his hands away. He had less than a second to worry about that before she was kneeling on the end of the bed, her hands tangled in his shirt, trying to yank it up over his head. Upon raising his arms she pulled it off easily, throwing it into a corner, but he took a step or two back in order to be able to remove his pants by himself.

Mainly, it was so that he'd have a few seconds just to look at her there, naked, on the end of his bed. She was perfect: he was entranced by the way the soft filtered light from the window played across her pale, slightly freckled skin, the softness promised by her breasts, the curving angles created by her lean form as she shifted position. Now he had the image of a body to pair with that of her kind and gorgeous face, and didn't have to wonder anymore. For a moment, he could almost imagine that they _had_ both been rescued together; that they'd bought this place together and been a couple since their first kiss, with no cruel death to tear them apart. That's how vibrant and wholly alive she looked.

Even in loose boxers, his stiffening was apparent, and he couldn't help it: he smiled awkwardly and blushed, and she laughed at him, though not unkindly. "C'mon, take 'em off." He gripped the waistband and stepped out of them, leaving them discarded on the floor. She didn't react badly to seeing him undressed—quite the opposite, in fact. When he tried to peel her panties away a second time, she raised her legs to make it easier for him.

Impulsively, he leaned in to place a kiss in the blonde thatch of her pubic hair. She took his hand and tugged him closer, but when it became clear that she was trying to pull him onto her, he hesitated.

"It's not like I haven't done this before," she breathed, her voice husky. "You're not going to hurt me. And even if I hadn't, _nothing_ can hurt me anymore."

It wasn't like _he_ hadn't done it before either, but this was different. _She_ was different, and he wouldn't take the chance. Ignoring her assurances, he laid himself down on the bed beside her and gently grasped her hips, maneuvering her until she was atop him and straddling his body as best she could. She laid both her hands on his chest, running them upwards until she gripped his shoulders. Her touch was hungry and frantic but not robbed of its inherent power to soothe.

"You're not forcing me into anything. I want you to know that right now." Pressing against him with her hands, she lifted her lower body off of him and settled him inside of her with a pleasurable, hissing intake of breath. All of his fears and insecurities melted away in the face of what was happening, and the last part of him that had still been afraid of getting hurt was able to accept her feelings. There would be no foreplay this evening: they were greedy for it to happen there and then. They grasped each others' hands, clutching intensely, and she began to rock herself forward and back.

It was the sweetest thing he had ever experienced, despite the fact that he was no stranger to the act itself. He felt powerless in the wake of her sensuality for the first few moments, just lying there, but soon joined her in the rhythm by rocking his pelvis in time to her thrusts. For a moment, he was almost afraid that this wasn't Libby at all: it must be Diana, wild goddess of the moon and the hunt, come down to Earth to break her vow of chastity at last. Then he was certain it was her, that this hungry and sexual being was his Libby after all, and his adoration for her grew boundlessly. What they had missed out on, back when she still drew breath!

Down _there,_ before arousal, he was just about on the slightly bigger side of average. Now, rock-hard, he nearly filled her. Then he arched his lower body, shifting some of his belly out of the way, and slipped further inside her. She moaned throatily as he began to stroke her g-spot, and her fingernails dug into the back of his hands. They began to rock more furiously, increasing the speed of their thrusting. Hurley could hold back his moans and little snatching gasps no longer. He had to struggle to keep himself from coming right then, so satisfied by her was he. But he held out, determined not to finish until she had come as well.

Libby untangled one of her hands from his gripping fingers and slipped it down between her legs, a scant distance above the place where their flesh met like lock and key. She worked her fingers, teasing and rubbing at the tiny bud of pleasure there, and moaned again, biting her bottom lip. Had she bitten just a _little_ harder, she might have actually drawn blood (if she had been able to draw blood, that was). She managed to hold out and prolong the conclusion for an admirable amount of time, but finally her hips bucked furiously against him and she was coming, crying out. The combination of these final thrusts and the sight of her experiencing _la petite mort _sent him over the edge, and he released himself in her, crying out as well. Even after his orgasm had ceased, he could still feel her contracting around him.

She laid herself against his chest, too exhausted to bother with removing herself from him just yet. They were both panting and utterly soaked in sweat—Hurley tended to sweat a lot anyway, but for someone so slight she had done a pretty good job of it herself. He ran the fingers of one hand through her damp hair and she sighed contentedly.

He still held her hand in his, and he squeezed it gently, bringing it up to his lips and kissing her knuckles. And finally, he was certain: he could say it without doubt, without reservations, without fear. The time for caution had long since passed. Murmuring it past her fingers:

"Love you."

--

For the first time since she had appeared in the glass, she fell asleep. In the past, if she had stayed into the late hours, she sat up until he fell asleep and was gone by the time he woke up. Now, he held her in his arms as they spooned, and when her breathing evened out, he kept repeating it in his head:

_"Love you."_

_She nuzzled her face against him, her lips tickling his chest. "Love you too."_

Maybe the Harolds and Maudes of the world never got happy endings. This Harold, he was satisfied with the _happy-enough _ending. The agony of losing her couldn't make him regret having known her...she had taught him so much in their handful of days. It still wasn't fair; it would _never_ be fair. It would never be right or okay. But he _had_ known her. And if the seemingly endless mourning was the price of that, he'd pay it a thousand times over.

Unafraid that she might disappear, he finally fell asleep, still holding her against him.

When he awoke early in the morning, she was still there, snoring lightly. He didn't move until she stirred, turning to face him and smiling groggily.

"Hey there."

"Hey."

--

By the time she had stepped out of the shower and changed into one of his clean shirts, he had breakfast on the table: bacon, eggs and toast. She cheerily accepted a plate, and he chuckled as he looked her over.

"You look like you're swimming in that." He set his plate on the table, and seated himself across from her.

The collar of the shirt kept surreptitiously attempting to creep down one shoulder, and she yanked it back up. "It's not really a good look, is it?" She plopped one of the sunny-side up eggs onto her slice of toast and took a large bite.

"Nah, you'd look good in anything." He smiled as he crunched into the bacon. "Or nothing."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," she chided him, still chewing her own mouthful of food and trying to smirk. Eyes wandering, she noticed the thick black rectangle on the far end of the table. "Hey, my book."

"Yeah, I picked it up when I started making breakfast. Didn't check it out though." Hurley grabbed it and looked it over. "_House of Leaves_...never heard of it." Flipping through it, he expressed a puzzled look. "How exactly do you _read_ this thing?" On many pages the text was tilted diagonally, oddly spaced, structured into shapes, or hardly there at all. Different words popped up in different colors, entire pages were nearly filled with X's or other repeating letters, and in one section, there were multiple boxes of text on each page serving as miniature pages-in-a-page themselves.

"It's a little challenging to get into."

"Shit, man," he exclaimed, flipping the book this way and that. "Are these little blocks of text here supposed to be read in a _mirror_?" He thumped the book to the table, shaking his head. "Dude, I don't even know what it's supposed to be about, and it's giving me the creeps." Trying not to dwell on it, he took a long sip of his orange juice.

Libby retrieved the book and riffled through the pages. "Damn." She pushed it aside, and stabbed at a piece of bacon with her fork. "Lost my page."

--

The question came to him one day, out of the blue. Once it did, he was amazed that it hadn't occurred to him earlier; it was such an obvious thing to ask. So he just blurted it out:

"Have you, uh...seen Charlie?"

She kept her back to him, arranging some fresh flowers in a vase upon the kitchen table. They, at least, had a mundane origin: he remembered what she said about liking the flower he had laid upon her grave, and came home with a bunch of fresh ones from the local florist. None of them were red this time, however: it just would have been too sad. "Why would I have?" Her tone was conversational, but maybe a touch too calm.

"Because, you're both, like...dead." He had told Libby about what had happened to Charlie on their first night together again.

"He's been visiting you, then?" Tilting her head to inspect the arrangement from a different angle, she raised the scissors and carefully snipped off a rogue sprig of baby's breath.

"Yeah. Unless I'm, you know, imagining all of it." The fact that she hadn't yet tried to dissuade him from thinking this about herself was troubling to him. In life, she had gone to great lengths in order to prove to him that everything happening around him was real. Maybe it was another one of those rules she had mentioned—perhaps he had to take it on faith, or it would be meaningless.

"Not all dead people congregate in the same channels, Hurley. Not even if they knew each other in life. Charlie was your visitor; I was Michael's. That's why I couldn't just come to you of my own free will."

He didn't know exactly what she meant by 'congregate in the same channels', or by assigned visitors, but he thought he understood the gist of it. "Oh." _Why Michael? Why not me?_

"I haven't seen Ana since it happened, and we died in the same room. She wasn't even that far ahead of me." She stood back to admire her flower craft. "I _have_ talked with the young blonde girl from your camp, even though I never saw her alive. So it's not entirely random, but it's not perfectly organized, either."

He didn't even realize that his mouth had fallen agape. _"_Shannon? You've seen _Shannon?"_

"Yes. She hasn't managed to contact _her_ person yet, though. She has a message she needs to pass on to him."

Automatically, he guessed that Shannon's person was Sayid. He turned out to be correct. "What's the message? Am I allowed to know?"

She stayed in silent thought for a beat or two. "Yeah, I think you would be. If she can't contact Sayid, I think she'd rather somebody hear it than leave it unsaid." The scissors were back in her hand again as she moved in to trim several wayward leaves. "The message is 'Please don't forget me. Bring me home'."

A little piece of Hurley's heart broke. He had dwelled almost constantly on the living people he had left behind, but now he considered the bodies of the dead, buried in a ground both foreign and unnatural. Boone, Shannon, Mr. Eko and Ana-Lucia. Charlie, his friend, whose body must be still decomposing somewhere in the cold and dark of the ocean. Even Libby, she who stood here before him now, was really still back there. Without even the simplest of caskets, the weight of all the sand pressing in against her body, wrapping around her face and _suffocating_—

"Have you seen anyone else?" she inquired, snapping him out of his guilty and morbid reverie. _Snip, _and a wilting little bud fell to the table. "Dave, I mean."

His answer came fast, snapping at the heels of her question. _"No." _Insistent. "Not since you saved me. Never again."

She placed the scissors on the table before she turned towards where he sat, slouched in one of the kitchen chairs. "Hey, hon, I was just asking. I didn't think you actually would have. I have faith in you." Fluidly, she sat herself in Hurley's lap, one arm around his shoulder and the other hand placed against the softness of his chest. "I told you that I believed you could change. I was telling the truth."

Her lips met his in a tender kiss, and his hands went up to cup her back. When they pulled away for air, she was smiling. Tucking an escaped lock of hair behind his ear, she began to recite a short poem.

_"If you steal her once,  
steal her twice,  
or free us with a glance—  
for an only child is the only chance  
to end this wicked curse—  
the only way, we say  
you rid a sea with dance  
and banish love to verse."_

"Whoa." He was impressed by not only the sound and flow of the poem, but by the fact that she had remembered it so clearly from whenever and wherever she had learned it. "Where did _that_ come from?"

"That book. The one you said was giving you the creeps."

"Wow. Maybe I was wrong about it, because that was really nice."

"It is," she agreed, and before she moved in for another kiss, she had one more thing to say: "But you weren't wrong."

--

He had been having weird dreams about Libby ever since she'd returned, some good and some bad. That night's, however, was surreal and frightening enough to stand out above all the others.

He was racing up an enormous, sprawling staircase—each step had to be at least twenty feet wide, and it ascended so far into the sky that it was impossible to see where it ultimately lead; when he looked behind himself, he couldn't see where he had come from. The staircase was open, exposed to the world without even a railing, but he wasn't afraid. The individual stairs were solid enough, but appeared to be made of water that was somehow thicker than it should be, which in turn looked like it held galaxy upon galaxy of nebulae and stars. With every step, ripples spread somewhere below the flat, glassy surface of the stair, as if he had dropped a stone into a pond. And although he couldn't see his destination, he knew what it was: he was going to the underworld—which in this case he supposed would be called the _overworld_ due to his upward climb. He possessed no instrument, neither harp nor lyre, but he was Orpheus

_(or free us)_

all the same, and he was going to bring her back. Granted, he had no idea how this would be accomplished.

But screw it. He'd figure it out once he got there.

In this dream he looked the same, but he was much more agile and athletic. He was running without feeling out of breath, and he wasn't sweating. In fact, he felt like he could go on forever, and managed to keep up his steady clip until he came upon the first bodies.

There were two of them, so old that they were little more than yellowed bones and scraps of rotted cloth, with their brittle hands clenching small pebbles. Somehow he knew that he had no business with them, or they with he, and he moved nimbly to the side without so much as a nervous shiver. There were more ahead, and as he ran further and further ahead, he noticed that they seemed to be slightly more recent deaths. Among them were large groups, and these were the ones he took the most notice of: here was a group of what he assumed had been men, because the clothes they wore resembled those of old-time sailors; there was a massive pile of bodies tumbled down many a stair, both male and female this time, wearing decrepit khaki jumpsuits with their skin shrunk tight across their grinning skulls and a little of their hair still clinging to their scalps, dry and fragile and straw-like. Then more individual bodies appeared, and a small group of corpses dressed like priests. When he reached the group beyond them, he finally began to twitch in building fear.

They weren't newly dead by any means, but they still seemed somehow _fresher _than the ones before, the remains of shriveled eyes still crumbly in their sockets. They were dressed in colorful clothes, _modern_ clothes, and just a foot or so away was another group dressed in the same. One male body still displayed the colors of the angry infection that had conquered one of his legs, and in that loose and somehow both sensical and nonsensical way that exists in dreams, he thought: _His name is Donald, and she buried him._

He shivered, gritting his teeth and jogging right on past.

_She buried a lot of people._

There was a man with his head cocked at an unnatural angle, a few people with their skulls bashed in, one man with a crude wooden spear jutting from his chest, and more he didn't recognize. Then Ethan Rom, that strangler of friends and kidnapper of pregnant women. There were one or two, perhaps even three more bodies with names he would have recognized but not necessarily counted as friends before he reached the gruesome little conga-line. He thought, distantly, that it should have chilled him, but instead it made him overheated, as if he were running in a sauna. They were spaced unevenly, but the distances between them were not large: a young male with a crushed leg, a heap of dried and desiccated flesh rendered unrecognizable, a female with smartly-cut blonde hair and a bullet hole marring her fashionable shirt. With the exception of Arzt, these bodies looked more human than skeleton. There was something still _wet_ about them, although no fetid liquid decomposition seemed present. And although he knew them, he had no desire to slow down and spend any time in their grim company. He had a Eurydice

_(you rid a sea) _

to save, and so he left Boone and Shannon behind him and continued upwards.

He had a short stretch in which he encountered nobody he could recognize, and it soothed his nerves. When he saw the two bodies up ahead, still too far away to make out their details, he realized that he should have known. There was no way he could _not _have known, not with the way this staircase had worked so far, but this was a dream, and nothing functioned the way it should—not even his thought process.

They were almost close enough to reach their dead hands out and touch one another, just three or four steps apart. The first one, dark haired, with a single bullet wound; her body better kept by the sand it had been buried in than wet soil would have been able to afford. The second, blonde, dull fingernails looking like scratched plastic. Her face had been smoothed before burial, but you would never know with the way her skin had withered and dried, drawing her jaw down in a horrible rictus. There were the twin holes in her green shirt, the spots of curdled and flaking blood that she had choked up on her collar. Her body was drawn back by her shriveled muscles: she looked as though she had died trying to bend herself in half backwards, arms cramped and hands like talons.

Eurydice was here, and the story had lied. There was no lord of the dead to plead a case to, no trial in which he was forced to not look back. This was the truth of death: it was final no matter what, even if old tales promised an exception for the heroic or talented or magical. There was no magic verse to sing and play. Just stiffening and rot and eventually being forgotten. His own body heat became so intense that he felt as though he might throw up.

He went to his knees and cradled her, her milky sunken eyes staring blindly through him. She was so light in his arms, so fragile, and she smelled of dry corruption and stale places. Strands of her hair fell out as he cupped the back of her head. She was dead, and whatever had made her _Libby _had gone and left a shell of bones and dried meat, but he wouldn't leave her alone. If that was all that was left of her, fine. He'd take her back with him and bury her properly, secrecy be damned. She deserved that much.

Rising with the bundle that had been Libby in his arms, face determined, he turned around. And as dreams often do, this one changed locations. He was atop some gargantuan structure, cold wind howling in his face, and as he turned, he had taken a step over its edge.

His arms pinwheeled, struggling for balance (he no longer held anything, much less a corpse), and although he screamed to himself not to look over the edge, he did so anyway. Like the stairs, what he stood upon was so tall that the bottom couldn't even be hinted at, instead melding into an inky black as it descended eternally. Jagged, razor-edged cliffs rose around it, and he had no doubt that the ground was just as capable of tearing him to shreds.

Finally, he obtained enough purchase to jerk himself backward, falling on his ass with the very tips of his feet sticking out beyond the edge. He scrambled backwards like a crab with his heart pounding at a sprint, trying to calm himself and catch his breath. He was seated upon black stone, and as he glanced around, he noticed that all he could see of it was seamless, seemingly carved out of a single, impossibly titanic piece of rock. Then he saw the rooms, the extensions and impossible branching corridors that extended from the surfaces around him kept above, below and around, and he realized that he was on the outcropping of some maddeningly intense skyscraper. No, this wasn't modern enough for that name. It was some kind of tower.

"You don't want to be here."

It was _her_ voice, and he scrambled to his feet, turning around. She was dressed in flowing white, like the proverbial elf-queen from so many fairy stories, but aside from that she looked the same.

"What is this?"

"It depends," she said, walking past him to stand at the edge of the outcropping and stare into the horizon. "It's been described in a lot of different ways, and it doesn't really have a form unless someone is experiencing it. Not a form we can grasp, at least. There are two descriptions I enjoy, by two different writers, and each of them leaves room for interpretation. The tower was the least frightening of the two."

"_Least_ frightening?" he said, and he found that he had to yell it - at some point a distant but horrendous cacophony had started up, sounding like the shriek of metal on metal. "What was the other one?"

"A house." She turned back, and noticed the skeptical look on his face. "Honestly, that one is far, _far_ worse...although some of its influence seemed to creep in here, in an inside-out fashion." She indicated the structurally impossible twists of outcroppings and enclosed corridors. "This is still mostly the tower, although I visualized it as tall enough to prevent a view of the bottom. I didn't think you'd want to see that. All those roses, when you're far enough away for them to look like one featureless mass...it looks like the earth is bleeding to death."

Hurley had absolutely no idea what she was on about, but it seemed too organized and specific for him to have created it on his own. Furthermore, something about the answer had made him realize that none of this was real. "So you're really in my dream right now? I'm not just imagining you're here?"

"The part of you that dreams is here," she said, and he noticed that he could hear her quiet voice just fine above the din. "Likewise, the part of _me _that _dreamed _is here."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Did you expect it to?" she asked, smiling. "It's a _dream,_ after all."

"But dreams usually make sense, like...when they're happening."

She shrugged. "You seemed to think it was making sense when you were running up all those stairs and there were bodies everywhere. You weren't even really surprised to find me among them." His face paled, and his mouth worked to say something. "Don't feel bad, and don't apologize. You can't help what you dream about, and besides, that's pretty much what I look like by now."

It hurt too much to follow that avenue of thought. "You told me why this place looks like it does. I still don't know what it _is."_

She nibbled her lower lip. "It's really, _really_ hard to say. I don't think there's actually a set definition for it."

He was tired of bullshit excuses, half-answers that just confused him more. But instead of asking about this place again—knowing that he would cease to be here upon waking—he chose to ask something that he had subconsciously avoided before.

"What's your last name?"

Instantaneously, the screech emanating from the sky grew more frenzied, harsher. "You don't want to do that, Hurley," she said, looking all around with wide eyes.

"What's the worst that could happen?" He yelled, getting angrier. "I'll just wake up!"

"You said that before, and it almost got you _killed_ before I talked you out of it." She took another step towards him. "So let me talk you out of it again: don't ask questions like that."

"Questions like _what? _Like anything that would let me know who you are?"

"The answers would break the spell." Her countenance grew mournful, and his anger abated just slightly.

"If you told me anything, you'd have to leave?"

"If I told you everything, yes. If I only told you some things, no. But you'd want me to anyway."

"I already told you that'd _never_ happen."

"You only feel that way because you can't even _begin_ to imagine how deep this goes."

"I trust you, Libby. So trust _me."_

She gazed at him with sad eyes. "I _do_ trust you." They were silent for some time, their eyes locked, and in the end Libby looked away first. "You might not remember any of this when you wake up. If you eventually do, you might not remember it right away. _I_ might not even remember it. But when you do recall this dream, and you're ready for the first part of it...ask me about the boat."

A niggling feeling was rattling around somewhere in Hurley's mind, a connection there in two pieces that had not yet been assembled. _Some_ part of him knew what she was talking about; now if only the _rest_ of him did. "What boat?"

She merely stared at him, an unreadable expression on her face.

"Libby,_ what boat?"_

Slowly, she raised one finger to her lips in a shushing gesture. She shook her head.

And that's when the wall behind her exploded.

It wasn't as if a bomb had been set off, no: it was as if the stone itself was water breaking from a dam. Seemingly liquid rock rushed towards them, pouring out from the impossibly angled dead-end corridors, but before it could reach Hurley, it snaked into lightning-fast tendrils that wrapped themselves around Libby. She was lifted into the air as they began retracting into the wall, fast as a tape measure when the button is released. It might have been his imagination going out of control, but he thought he heard bones snap as her arms were crushed to her body.

"LIBBY!" he screamed, already chasing after her, but it was no use. She was sucked into the structure, leaving no trace behind, and the wall remained solid for him no matter how hard he pounded on it. He beat his hands bloody as he screamed for her, skin peeling and hanging, but he could not get to where she was. He would always be too late to save her.

"Libby," he whispered to himself as he fell to his knees, his dragging hands leaving patchy streaks of blood that shone against the black rock. He fell silent, and that's when it registered: the cacophony of shearing metal had ceased entirely. Had, in fact, done so as soon as she placed her finger to her lips and warned him to be quiet. Suddenly, he was positive that someone or some_thing_ lurked behind him, and turned one hundred and eighty degrees, flinging his back to the wall.

A mere split-second before he would have caught whatever it was in his sight, the tower gave a mighty lurch and the floor cracked beneath him. Whatever might have been there—if anything at all—had disappeared, using the shift as its chance to take flight. He tried to lunge forward, but the crack spread, and then suddenly the entire tower crumbled beneath him. He had one exhilarating moment of hanging in space before he began hurtling downwards.

The breath was snatched from his throat and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, but he found himself unable to close his eyes. He revolved in the air, falling an impossible distance; and looking down, he spotted her.

She was twenty or so feet below him, her body stretched out and her arms reaching up towards him. There was one nail in each of her eyes, stuck right through the pupils, each formerly green and perfect iris red with busted veins. The resulting blood was spattered across her gown, and her mouth was frozen in an expression of surprise that was halfway between a gasp and a grimace.

_Two nails, _he thought distantly. _Just two pieces of metal, and that's all it took. _Before he could even begin to reach out to her, he began to gray out. _No! If I wake up now, I won't remember._

Crazily, his muddled mind began to argue with itself. _If you keep dreaming, you'll hit the ground. Don't you die in real life when you die in your dreams?_

_I don't care,_ the first part of him countered. Then, he could have sworn a voice that was not a part of him answered...and it sure wasn't any part of Libby, either.

_**IT'S NOT UP TO YOU**_

As if thrown back into wakefulness by some unseen hand, breath half-caught in his throat, Hurley jerked out of sleep. He rocketed into a sitting position, cold sweat soaked through his shirt, his underwear, his pillow, even the sheets below and atop him. He shakily placed a hand over his face as the pale and shallow light of a very early morning washed over him. The dream was rapidly melting out from between the fingers of his consciousness, and he tried desperately to keep his hold on what was left. He wasn't quite sure why, but he knew it was important he remember this.

"Hurley?" Libby mumbled from beside him, her speech muffled by the cotton of sleep. "Whas' wrong?" She sat herself up beside him slowly, tiredly, and gently drew his hand away from his face. When he still refused to speak, she cupped his face and turned it to look at her. "Wha'is it?"

Looking into her face, he received a shock just substantial enough to make him forget everything he had dreamt. She had been crying in her sleep, salty tracks still wet on her cheeks, and it must have been hard enough to burst two or three blood vessels, because her eyes were badly bloodshot.

_There's something I'm supposed to remember. This shouldn't have made me lose track of it. It should have _reminded_ me. _He groped invisibly, trying to catch the fugitive recollection before it got away.

"Hurley?"

It was no use. "I don't remember," he said hollowly. "I don't remember."


	4. Chapter of Stairs

**Chapter of Stairs**

_Maybe I've been here before,  
I know this room, I've walked this floor,  
I used to live alone before I knew you.  
I've seen your flag on the marble arch,  
Love is not a victory march,  
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah._

_-Rufus Wainwright, "Hallelujah"  
_

--

Within a few days, the urgency to recall what he had dreamt about faded. Remaining was the feeling that it was important, and that eventually, he was bound to remember it; but for now, he would live without concerning himself about it. Life at that point was too sweet to allow anything to get in the way of him savoring it.

Hurley was seated on the couch, his back against one of its arms and his legs straight out in front of him. Libby sat between them, her back resting against his chest. One of his hands had crept over her shoulder and down the collar of her shirt to gently cup one of her breasts. She sighed comfortably, and he lightly tweaked her nipple.

"It must get frustrating for you." Her hand was on his kneecap, and she gave it a squeeze. "Not being able to go out anywhere with me."

"No." He answered in a rush, but then paused to think about it. "Well, I'd like to take you places and stuff. I want to see the world with you, and do everything there is to do with you. But this, right here, this is more than I could have ever actually hoped for."

"Maybe you should start to consider finding someone you can do all those things with."

"I don't need anyone else. I don't _want_ anyone else."

"I can't make you happy, Hurley. If things had worked out differently, I think I could have. I think we could have had a _wonderful_ life together. But holding onto me now isn't going to change anything."

He buried his face in the wavy hair atop the crown of her head, tickling the follicles with the movement of his lips. "All I ever wanted was _you_. And I didn't even know it until I first saw your face."

She smiled fondly, although he couldn't see it. "There's no such thing as 'love at first sight'...although I'm very flattered to know you found me attractive from the beginning."

"That's not what I mean," he said, and then quickly backpedaled when he realized how that sounded. "No, I mean, like...I _did_ find you attractive, of _course_ I did. You're gorgeous, and I was always, uh...attracted to you...in that way." His face burned red with embarrassment. "But you were different. There were a lot of pretty girls on the island—"

"Hmm," Libby interrupted mischievously. "So you were looking elsewhere, were you?"

"Wha...? No, I mean...that is—"

"I was _kidding, _hon. It's perfectly healthy and normal to look. Even if you did, you didn't do anything wrong."

"Oh. Okay." His face had gone even redder. "I mean, I looked _before_ you arrived at our camp. But once I saw you, it didn't even cross my mind. Honest."

"No worries, I believe you," she said, leaning her head in to kiss the forearm poking out of her collar.

"What I mean is...there was something different about you, or you made me feel different, I dunno which. When I ran over to help you with that tarp, I was just being helpful because you were all, like, frustrated, and you didn't have anyone to else to help you out...but when you smiled at me, I started to fall for you. Very hard, and very fast. Which, come to think of it, is how I usually fall."

He heard her take an almost shocked breath in. She held it for a moment, silently, before breaking into merry laughter. "Oh my god, Hurley," she cried, removing his hand from her top so that she could turn to face him. She placed an unexpected, smacking kiss square on his lips, and regarded him with giddy, sparkling eyes.

"What? What did I say?"

"That's the first time I've ever heard you make a joke like that!"

"I've made jokes about my weight in front of you before," he said, thoroughly confused. "A lot."

"I know. But this is the first one where you didn't sound like you were berating yourself. It was _just_ a joke!"

Realization dawned on him, and he broke out into an astonished half-grin. He had made a joke like the one she had made when he found her thong: just a joke recognizing the reality of things, without any mean spirit in it. She had shown him the worth he had before, back on the edge of that cliff, but he had begun slipping back when she was murdered. Now she had done it again, and he was amazed to find that so many things could change for the better if all you had was one person to love, one person who would love you back.

"Yeah," he said, grinning fully now, and this time he kissed her. "Yeah, I guess it was."

"I'm so proud of you, Hurley. I told you that I believed you could change, and you _are_ changing."

"I haven't lost that much weight, though," he admitted, worried that this confession might spoil the mood. "Maybe ten pounds at the most."

"All you need to be concerned with is being healthy, and it's better for your body if you start off slowly. I didn't take you jogging back on the Island because I was dissatisfied with your looks, you know. Don't _ever_ think that. I just wanted you to be healthier, and that doesn't just concern the body; it's about how you view yourself, too. Judging from the joke you just made, you're more accepting of yourself now. And that's _much_ more important than losing a lot of weight."

He was about to agree with her, and thank her for believing in him, when he fixated on something else she had just mentioned. "So wait," he said, in a way that suggested _let me get this straight. _"You never, about my looks, you didn't—"

"Like you _despite_ your weight?" The smile on her face was gently chiding. "No, no of _course_ not. I liked _you. _And 'you' doesn't just entail your personality. It's your personality, your strengths, your flaws, your habits, your hopes and goals, and yes, the body that houses all of that. Okay, so you might not have what's considered to be a conventionally attractive body type—but if that's _all_ I cared about, I would have tried my luck with Sawyer or Jack or someone else. That alone doesn't make a person, and seeking it out _never_ makes a real relationship.

_"You,_ Hugo, I love _you_. Every aspect of you, even what you perceive as flawed. You're kind, and giving, and funny, and accepting, and...and you're the friendliest person I've _ever_ known! You're sensitive, and honest, and fun-loving; you don't want anything more than to love me and make me happy, and you're so gentle when you touch me. You have the cutest smile, and when you hug me I feel like nothing could ever hurt me. You're warm and soft and safe, and you're adorable—_and_ handsome—and...I just love _you. _I know you've wondered about it, that day when you told me 'a girl like me' could never like you—and now you don't have to." She grinned, poking the tip of his nose with an index finger. "Get it now?"

"Yeah," he breathed, dumbstruck. "Yeah, I get it."

"Good." This time her lips descended onto the tip of his nose. "I still can't believe you thought so little of yourself to be able to _say_ something like that. 'A girl like me'...what kind of girl was I, Hurley? A psychologist just shy of forty, with a degree but without anyone who loved her? A woman who had been gangly-looking until the age of twenty-two and still kind of showed it? Someone with permanent dark circles under her eyes from erratic sleeping and frizzy hair?"

"Don't say stuff like that," he protested, searching her eyes. "You're beautiful, and even though I couldn't really show it then, I loved you. And I don't give a _shit_ about how old you are!" he firmly declared. "I don't. It doesn't _matter."_

"_Language!" _she warned jokingly, giggling at his choice of words. "Okay then. I won't talk like that any more. But _you _can't beat up on yourself anymore. Deal?"

"Deal." He pulled her in tight against him, her knees tucked against her chest, and decided that it was a damn good deal she had offered. His arms enveloped her and he felt like he could be a nest: he could protect this little bird he held, forever and ever, and she'd never have to leave him again. He'd never wanted to truly _live_ so much as when he was with her.

"Hurley," she murmured, and he looked down to answer her.

"Yeah?"

"Think you could help this old lady to the bedroom?"

"You tired?" he asked, ready to scoop her up at a moment's notice and tuck her in.

"No." She snuggled in even closer to him, and nearly whispered her answer. "Horny, mostly."

He was up in a flash, running towards the bedroom with her in his arms as she kicked her feet and squealed with mirth.

--

"We didn't get to do any of the fun stuff last time," she said, voice low and breathy as she grabbed the waistband of his boxers and yanked them down.

"I thought it was pretty fun," he grinned, slipping out of the underwear and kicking them aside.

"Well yeah, 'course it was, but it was hardly _creative._ We didn't play around at all." Her hand seized in between his legs, gently grasping hold of his shaft, and his breath caught in his throat. She tried tugging lightly in order to lead him to the bed, but he said "No. Not yet." Taking her back into his arms, he gently laid her out upon the mattress before returning to the foot of the bed and making as if to crawl on top of her.

"Ooh, what do we have here?" she asked, doing a good job of acting coy. She spread her legs and he settled himself in between them, but he didn't enter her. Instead he placed his hands on her breasts, tracing lazy circles around her nipples with his thumbs. "Mmm." The sound came from way back in her throat. He caressed her lovingly, his touch light but not _too_ light, and lightly pinched one nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Now his touch became a shade rougher, and he bent forward to lay a kiss in the small shallow bowl at her sternum. More kisses were laid in a trail leading to her right breast, and he began to suck on the nipple there, his hands working smoothly all the while.

Arching her neck and tipping her head back, she let out a moan. After a little while he moved his mouth to the other breast, leaving delicate bite marks and traces of wetness behind. He kissed the underside of her breast, kissing another trails downwards, but when he kissed her just below the navel, she struggled to pull herself upwards. "Let's do you first," she panted, pushing him to sit on the edge of the mattress while she herself got up and knelt on the floor before him. "I don't think I'll be able to _move_ once you've finished with me, so if you want it, it's gotta be now."

"Yeah." He spread his legs and she leaned forward to slip her head between them. He was as hard as he'd ever been in his life, and when she laid her hands on him again, an electric shudder traveled through his body. She wrapped one hand around his shaft and slid it up and down, and when he gave a tiny gasp she bared her teeth in an expression that was wildly sexy, almost vulpine.

"Libby." He spoke in short, halting gasps when he could manage to force out words at all. He had suddenly remembered the fact that many women weren't comfortable giving head, and this was only their second time having sex. "You...don't...hafta..." No, she didn't _have_ to, and he'd never dream of trying to _make_ her...but he _wanted_ her to.

"Stop trying to be a gentleman and just _enjoy_ it," she ordered playfully, grinning at him. "If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't be between your thighs right now, would I?" Before he had a chance to even gather his thoughts and _try_ to respond, he was in her mouth and she was licking him there, teasing him with feather-light flicks of her tongue.

_"Ohgod," _he sputtered, blurting it out as one word. "_OhgodLibby_." She had to restrain herself from giggling fondly at him: even during the basest of acts, he had an innocence about him that endeared him to her. The hand that wasn't holding his shaft went to his balls, and she lightly fondled them before taking as much of him into her mouth as she could. His compound words devolved into pants and moans, the language of desire, and of and dark places where it was fulfilled.

Libby was exceedingly skilled, and began to deep-throat him, feeling the soft pressure of his belly against her forehead. Little noises sprang from her throat as well, and the resulting vibrations of her vocal cords added to the sensation. She withdrew her mouth to work the head again, the fingers that had been on his testicles tracing whorls along his shaft. She could taste the saltiness of precum, and knowing he was close, took him back into her throat.

He was so delirious that he didn't even think to warn her before it happened, so that she could disengage herself if she so chose. He spasmed, the electricity filling him before traveling through his body and into her, and he shot his load down the back of her throat. She had been expecting it, but _still_ managed to choke a little, coughing after she had swallowed.

He had already fallen, sprawled on his back, but jerked himself back up into a half-seated position. "You okay?" he panted, anxiously reaching a hand down to touch her cheek.

"Sex," she said, clearing her throat, wiping her mouth and laughing, "is never dignified. No matter how many times you happen to have done it."

Relieved, he laughed and flopped onto his back once more, legs still dangling over the side. She crawled up to curl beside him and he turned partway on his side to look at her, and he tucked a lank, sweaty lock of her hair back out of her face. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"Oh, I know a few tricks," she teased, poking him in the chest. "You like?"

He nodded, his movements loose and haphazard, his breathing hard. "Yeah, I like." He shifted to lay on his back again, staring at the ceiling.

"Good. Ready for my turn?"

Holding up a finger, he nodded again, still panting. "Just gimme a minute."

She chuckled, taking hold of his shoulder. "Alright, Big Dog. Don't take _too_ long." Big Dog and Little Dog had become a set of cheeky pet names between them ever since their conversation about what canine breeds they preferred.

Having finally managed to slow his heart rate to something under a million miles an hour—god, but she was _good_!—he hauled himself up. "Alright, Little." He stood up and tugged on her ankles, pulling her to the edge of the bed so that her legs hung over the way his had. "You can sit up, or keep laying down. Whatever you want."

She extended a hand to him, and he pulled her into a seated position. "Let's try this sitting up. It seemed to work out real well for you." She threw him a wink, and he scrunched his face up in one of his winks in return before settling on his knees before her. Once again, he had a flash of Diana: he was her priest, kneeling before her altar, and he would make sacrifice. And just as fast as it had come, the image was gone. He was not here to gaze upwards at her form, as if she'd never accept him. He was here to love to her _as an equal._ So when she parted her legs, he spread her apart down there with the fingers of one hand and tentatively touched his tongue to the flesh there.

He wasn't quite as skilled as she at giving oral, but he was far from mediocre. Her breathing turned to hisses as his tongue pushed inside her to explore the warm wetness there. He darted his tongue in and out, licking her in slow, languorous strokes and sucking gently on her inner lips. She knotted her fingers into his hair and tugged as her hisses gave way to moans, and when he increased the speed and pressure she pushed his face harder against her pelvis. The taste of her, the _scent_ of her saturated ever fiber of his being, and he felt hungrier for her than he had ever been. He needed to go deeper, to bury his face against her.

As his pace grew more and more frantic, so did she. "Oh, Hugo," she moaned, voice wavering. "I'm almost...I'm almost there." Finally, as if in response, he stopped teasing the most essential area and went for it. His tongue probed her hood and began tracing circles around her clit, and her hips and thighs began to tremble and tense, tremble and tense. He played at this for as long as he felt she could handle it, and when she choked out an "Oh god," he sucked that little bud past his lips, grazing it on his bottom teeth, and very gently nipped at it.

The sound she let out was almost feral, the call of something always wanting, something always lurking just behind her smile. She yanked his hair hard enough to hurt this time before falling onto her back and releasing him. Now it was his turn to wipe his mouth and sit next to her on the mattress. "Good?"

"Yes," she panted. "A big fucking yes." He chuckled fondly and leaned over her for a kiss. They met with mouths open, and he realized that with that kiss, they could taste themselves in the mouth of the other. Something about that thought sent him half-mad, and he wanted to go another round.

"You, ah, up for more?"

"Hold your horses. I gave you your minute, now give me mine."

It ended up being more like two minutes, but when she finally motioned to him, he had no complaints. And _this_ time, when she tried to pull him on top, he acquiesced.

--

"Dude. That was, like..."

"Amazing?" she ventured when he had left the sentence open for too many beats. They were basking in the post-coital afterglow, and he wished he'd had the foresight to place a container of bubble solution next to his bed for just this type of occasion.

"Yeah."

She was laid out right up against him, head and one arm across his chest as he fiddled with her hair, other arm tucked in close against her stomach. "I _told_ you we didn't get to do any of the fun stuff last time."

"Well, last time was amazing too. But this was better." He pondered a moment. "The, um, actual _regular_ sex, part, though? I like it better when you're on top."

"Okay. We can do it that way from now on." She stroked his chest, running her fingers through the kinky coarseness of his chest hair.

"You don't mind, do you? If you like being on bottom, we can keep doing that."

"Nah, I think I like it better being on top too. I just wanted to give it a try, because otherwise, we'd never know...although I've never heard bad things about the 'woman on top' style in the first place."

"Good. Because even thought you're um...well, you know...I kept worrying I would hurt you. I've never been on top before."

"Even if I wasn't 'you know', you wouldn't injure me. The human body is built to withstand the rigors of sex. All kinds of sex, with all kinds of people." She pinched his nipple rather hard. "And trust me, it didn't hurt. Far from it." A silence followed, a little awkward but not uncomfortable, in which they just enjoyed the feel of each other. He continued toying with her hair, his other arm wrapped around her in order to shelter her back and hold her close. "You seem to like playing with my hair," she murmured, breaking the quiet.

"Yeah," he said, blowing a soft breath to ruffle the strands he held. "It's beautiful. I just love touching it."

"It always used to get messed up so easily. I'd tie it back, and little fluffs would spring up all over. I always looked like I just got out of bed."

"I think that makes you look cute. It's like...dandelion fuzz."

He could feel the muscles in her face shift against his chest as she smiled softly. "Dandelion fuzz, huh? You'd better stop blowing on it then, or it's all going to come off and drift away. _Then_ you'll be sorry."

"I wouldn't be all that sorry. It's pretty, but it's not what makes me feel this way."

"Aw, that's so sweet! You're such a romantic, always knowing the right things to say to make a girl feel good."

"Except when I told you I made you up." He had begun to wonder something, and he tried to work up enough guts to do so. He didn't want to hurt her, but it was something he needed to know.

"Yeah, except that; I'll agree there. But don't start beating yourself up about it now. It's long over."

"I'm not, and I won't. But um, with you being..."

"Dead?"

"Yeah, dead, and me being alive...does that make what we're doing necrophilia?" He braced himself for her to get upset, or angry, or even to tell him that she couldn't talk about that. Instead, she began to laugh loudly, her ribcage shaking and little tears gathering in her eyes. "Libby? What's so funny?"

"Oh, Hurley." She tried to stop her laughter, but a few guilty chuckles fought their way up from her throat. "It's just that you've been talking to and living with a dead person for some time now, and this is the _second_ time we've made love, and you're not worried that you're going crazy like you were when Charlie came to you: you're worried that you're a fledgling necrophile. You're just one of a kind, you know that? There's nobody in the world like you. And I love that about you." He stammered, trying to reply, but she slapped his chest lightly and cut him off. "No, it's not necrophilia. That is a sexual attraction to corpses, which happen to be both decomposing and inanimate. This is more like 'ghost sex', though I hate to say that because it just ends up sounding so ridiculous."

"So, we're like, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore?"

"Yeah, but with reversed roles. And better-looking." This elicited a chuckle from him, and she grinned. "What, don't you agree? Alright, maybe I phrased it wrong. We're definitely _sexier_ than them. We practically ooze pheromones when we're together."

He untangled his hand from her hair and grasped the hand she had laid upon his chest. "You were so patient with me, Libby, and if I had known, I wouldn't have tried to take things so slowly. You've always been good for me, from the moment we met."

"Ditto," she whispered, and when Hurley got the reference a second or two later he squeezed her hand lovingly. "You were the best thing that could have possibly happened to me, even _before_ we met."

"Huh?" His confusion was slightly tempered by the assumption that she was just trying to be poetically romantic, but he was still somewhat puzzled by the cryptic remark.

"No questions. It'd just get in the way of _this_," she breathed, bringing her face up and kissing him deeply on the lips. She used her free hand to push herself upright, and climbed atop him while throwing the sheets back.

"Again?" Astonishment was plainly evident in his voice, but his face was dominated by a pleasantly surprised smile.

"Would you rather not?"

"No ma'am," he said, grabbing her hips and gripping them tightly.

--

It was over that morning's breakfast that he remembered the dream.

She was the early riser this time around, and she was chopping some fresh fruit when he walked into the kitchen. Looking, he saw that she was focused on strawberries and bananas, while a bowl of blueberries sat ready on the table. Next to the berries were dishes of vanilla yogurt, glasses of juice, and a box of granola. Her definition of breakfast was a little healthier than his, he noted with only a small amount of wry amusement. He figured he shouldn't be surprised at all, since her lunches and dinners followed much the same pattern.

"Morning, Little Dog." He gave her a hearty slap on the ass, and she jumped with a little snort of laughter.

"Hurley, I'm using a knife here! You're going to make me cut myself."

"Sorry. Just couldn't resist." He plucked up one of the little wheels of banana and popped it into his mouth. "You brought more clothes here a while back, so why do you wear my stuff the morning after? It doesn't even come close to fitting you."

She rolled her eyes, smirking. "Because that's what you _do. _The girlfriend and boyfriend have sex at his place, and the girlfriend wears one of his clean shirts in the morning. I think it's romantic and cute."

"I think so too. But this place is _yours,_ too. We live here together."

She smiled and stood on tiptoe to give him a peck on the cheek. "With all the other women on that island, I'm lucky that I got you first." She scooped the chunks of fruit into a bowl, and ferried it over to the table. "Come on, let's eat. You have to be _starving_ after everything we did last night—I know I am." As Hurley took his seat across from her, she spooned fruit and granola into her dish of yogurt.

He _was_ famished, and they both made quick work of the food, even eating the leftover fruit and granola. "I don't think that was a substantial enough meal for this particular morning," she admitted. "Next time we have sex, you're picking the breakfast menu."

"How often will that be?" He smiled at her from above the rim of his glass.

"Oh, _very_ often, I think." She winked at him. "The first time it was something of a sacred act between us, and we just jumped right in because we needed it. Last night, the second time around, that was us trying out different things after we were more comfortable with each other. Now, since there's no hyped-up reason to make us nervous, we'll probably start making love more casually. In the beginning, while this is all still fresh, that could mean several times a day."

"If I cook for us _that_ often, my shirt _will_ end up fitting you." She affected an offended gasp and flicked a blueberry at him, sticking her tongue out. Her eyes, however, showed her amusement. He dodged the projectile and grinned. "Jokes aside, though, you won't hear me complaining. Sex with you is the best I've ever had. These are, like, some of the best moments of my entire life, all this time I spend with you."

Reaching across the table, she took his hand in hers. "I'd say the same, except it's more like the best moments of my afterlife. I just wish it didn't have to be like that."

"Yeah." His voice grew soft and sad, and he found himself recalling the words they had shared in between acts the night before, specifically the statement that had perplexed him.

_You were the best thing that could have possibly happened to me, even _before _we met._

Suddenly, he had one clear image in his head, crisp as a frame from a movie: a tower of black stone. Then the staircase, the bodies, Libby's desiccated corpse in his arms, and Libby alive again in white silk like some real-world Galadriel. The collapse of the tower, and Libby falling with nail-pierced eyes.

"What about the boat, Libby?" he blurted, not sure why he mentioned it until the conversation from his dream caught up to the images.

The smile remained on her face, and her hand stayed atop his, but something in her eyes changed subtly. "What did you say?"

"You told me to ask you about the boat. In my dream. The dream-version of you said that we might forget about it at first, but that when I remembered, I needed to ask you about the boat."

Slowly, her smile crumbled. Her face became serious, and he thought perhaps even a little frightened. "I remembered a couple of days ago. I was hoping you wouldn't." She sighed. "But I suppose some part of my subconscious hoped you _would_, or I wouldn't have told you to ask me in the first place."

"Libby, what is it? You can tell me _anything_. I swear."

She patted his hand before standing to clear the dishes. "I'll tell you. I said I would, and I will. But not here."

"Uh, Libby?" he ventured carefully, watching her as she stacked the bowls in the sink. "There isn't really, like, anywhere else we _can_ go."

"Well..." she said, voice guilty as if thinking _should I tell him this, or shouldn't I? _"Actually, there is. Sort of."

He gaped at her, unsure of what to say at first. "You've got to be kidding me. Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Because it's not necessarily the safest place in the world for you to be. But I'm not going to tell you about the boat here, and destroy all of the good memories filling up this house. The other place is the only location _I_ can take you to, and you can't take me anywhere, so it has to be there or nothing at all." She softened as she turned on the tap to rinse the dishes. "So don't take offense, okay? I just didn't want to put you in any danger."

"If you don't want to put me in danger, why take me there now?"

"You'll be fine, if you just follow my instructions and be careful. I'll be with you all the while." She turned back to him and took his hand, laying a kiss in the center of his palm. "I promise."

"Is this going to be like that painting? Because if it is, I'm not going. I can't...I can't watch that again, Libby. I just can't."

"It's nothing like the painting," she reassured him. "The only thing they have in common is that the wine glass is crucial to both."

"Why? It's just a glass. I bought a whole crate of 'em at some antiques place. Why did I see you in that one? Why not any of the others?"

"Come on," she said, releasing him and leaving the kitchen. "We need to get dressed."

--

He handed her the glass, having filled it with water like she requested. "Are you ready?" she asked, holding it carefully.

"Yeah, I guess so. It's kinda hard, though, not really knowing what to be ready _for."_

"This is going to sound really silly, but all you need to do is look into the glass."

"Like, at the water?" There wasn't anything else to focus upon.

"Yeah," she smiled. "I told you it was going to sound silly. Just look down into it from above."

"Sure." As he did so, she began to move her hand in a clockwise circle. The water swished around, eventually swirling itself into a spiral. "Wha—"

"Shhh," she whispered, cutting him off. He immediately fell silent, and stayed that way for what seemed like ages. Just as he opened his mouth to tell her it must not be working, he felt himself begin to fall forward.

As soon as he felt his equilibrium go crazy, he tried to throw out his arms to balance himself, quickly finding himself unable to do so: his body was constricted, as though he was submerged in some incredibly viscous fluid. Colors streamed in around him, making him imagine that he must be part of some stained-glass window, and he forced his eyes closed, getting dizzy. He was falling, falling, tumbling downward into some drowning abyss, and then the voice cut in—

"Hurley, look out!"

He felt thin hands clamp themselves fiercely around his upper arm, fingernails digging into the flesh there in an effort to yank him backwards. He became aware that he was standing upright once more, leaning so far over that he was about to tip and fall head over ass, and opened his eyes: he was on a massively wide, circular staircase crafted of black iron grating, spiraling down into the dark so far that he couldn't even see the bottom. If he fell forwards now he would crash his way down it for a good distance, breaking god knew how many bones along the way. His feet went out from under him as forced himself to fall back instead, landing hard on his ass upon the step behind him. A loud "oof!" rang out, and he realized he hadn't _quite_ landed on the step. Not with _his_ luck.

No, he had landed on _Libby_, who had landed on that step herself when he accidentally knocked her down.

"Oh, _Jesus!"_ he yelled, scrambling off her; if his mother could have heard him then, she would have either smacked him or fallen on her knees to start praying for his immortal soul...maybe even both, in quick succession. "Oh Jesus, Libby, are you alright?!" She was laid out, dazed, and Hurley could tell that he had come down on her legs. It also looked like she had banged her head on yet another step further up behind them, but he couldn't tell for sure. He took her upper body in his arms, bringing her to a half-seated position and holding her to him. "I'm _so_ sorry, are you okay?" He wanted to ask _did I break you, _but that would just sound stupid.

She took a gasping breath in, finding that a bit of the wind had been knocked out of her, and gave him a shaky thumbs-up. "You are _so_ damn lucky that you can't really injure me," she said, half-giggling, "or that could have ended badly."

"I'm _so_ sorry," he stammered again, checking her over for injuries despite her assurance, and despite the fact that she didn't even bleed when cut; he just _had_ to be sure. "Do you need me to carry you? Are you _sure_ you're not hurt or anything? 'Cuz I can carry you," he babbled. He had frightened himself so much that he didn't know what to say, and ended up speaking just to calm himself down.

"Hurley. Take a deep breath." She tugged and pushed against him in order to get to her feet. "I'm _fine_. It was a stupid accident, and I'm actually pretty glad that it happened. Unlike me, you _can_ come to bodily harm, and falling down this staircase could have hurt you pretty badly. So _I_ should be asking if _you're_ okay."

"Yeah," he said nervously, trying to force himself to keep from shaking. "I'm okay. You kind of...broke my fall."

"Good," she said, her tone matter-of-fact. She brushed off the legs of her pants. "If you're ready to move on, we can start down right away." Taking his hand, she began to descend the staircase carefully.

"So, uh...where exactly _are_ we?" he asked, looking this way and that. No matter what direction he focused on, all he could see was a deep, pregnant blackness; and yet somehow, despite all of that, there was enough light coming from _somewhere_ to illuminate the stairs. He felt a chill run up his spine and shivered, shaking his head as if he could make their surroundings normal by doing so. "Is it another version of what I saw in my dream?"

"No. This is a way-station between life and death. Although the reason it looks as it does is because I subconsciously imagine it this way. It's another image, drawing on that book I was reading."

"Could I change it, if I pictured something and, like, just concentrated _really_ hard on it?"

"Not yet," she said. "And hopefully not for a long, _long_ time."

They fell silent after that, walking quietly hand in hand. The number of steps seemed infinite, and Hurley began to feel a queer sort of vertigo from the constant spiraling. He closed his eyes to take a deep breath in through his nose, trying to calm his stomach, and he hadn't spent more than two seconds with his eyes shut when she said, "Alright, we're here."

Upon opening his eyes they were assaulted by light from below. Looking down he could see that the blackness ended about twenty feet above the ground, which appeared to be covered in thick green grass. The stairs burst from the shadows to continue all the way down. The brightness was actually daylight.

"Whoa." He allowed himself to be led by the hand as Libby continued down. They reached the bottom, and she pointed to a small patio table and some chairs a short distance away.

"That's where we're headed," she said, and they started forward. The grass felt hardy and springy beneath his feet, but he nearly tripped over what he assumed to be a rock. A quick glance revealed it to be the skull of some horse-like animal, picked clean and sun-bleached. Actually, now that he knew what to look for, there were an awful lot of bones scattered about, all different sizes and shapes. He wasn't an expert on that sort of thing, but she would have sworn a handful of them looked human, or close to it.

"Libby, what is this?"

"I told you, remember? It's a way-station between my plane of existence and yours." Upon reaching the table, she grabbed a chair and sat down. He followed her example, and turned to take a look back at the staircase. What he saw frightened him: the spiraling stairs extended upwards into the clouds with no apparent end. There was not a trace of the formerly enveloping blackness to be found.

She saw the look on his face and interjected. "It's okay, it just looks different depending on what side you're on. We can still get back that way."

"Did we, uh..." He hesitated to ask, merely because it sounded so childishly idiotic. "Did we come down here through the glass?"

"Yeah, I suppose so. I came down here that way, but the only part of _you_ here is your consciousness."

"Where's the rest of me?"

"Your body is lying comatose back in your apartment, with the glass itself, and once we return you'll be back to normal. This place is how I got to the glass in order to find you. If the glass goes, then that staircase goes, and I won't be able to reach you anymore."

He felt suddenly hot and cold at the same time, as if he were running a high fever. Her entire existence in his world hinged on that single fragile cup, and he had left it out on some dinky little end table? He could have knocked it over on hundreds of occasions! That would have been it! One little bump and he would have killed her a second time.

"Hurley, honey, are you alright? You're sweating like crazy." She reached to swab his forehead with one hand, and felt ice-cold moisture beading up from boiling skin. "Oh my god. Are you sick, or are you having another panic attack?"

He tried to answer her but his teeth clenched together as he shivered, pressing and grinding hard enough to trigger his gag reflex. He gagged dryly twice before getting a hold of himself. "I think it's a panic attack. I'll be fine." When she took both his hands in hers, he clutched them tightly. He tried to remind himself of what Libby would say to him if she knew why he was upset: _it's in the past, you can't change what's _already_ happened, just change your habit and move forward differently starting now._

As soon as they got back, he was going to take that glass and lock it in the cabinet with the others.

Finally his breathing began to slow and he closed his eyes, inhaling and exhaling slowly and deeply. He took the air in through his nose and expelled it from his mouth, and found himself more or less calm. He made sure he wasn't going to lose it again before opening his eyes.

"You okay now?" she asked, both her voice and face full of concern.

He forced up a shaky half-smile for her. "I think so," he said, and she smiled back at him. He was relieved to not be worrying her so much anymore, to be able to see that expression reappear on her face. There was such a gentle love in her eyes when she looked at him that way, and he wanted to protect that smile from anything and everything that might cause it to disappear.

"Do you want to tell me what caused it?"

In truth, he didn't, but he knew that it was the right thing to do. "With what you said about the glass, and what would happen to _you_ if something happened to _it_...I just got really freaked out."

"Hurley," she murmured, her voice nearly soft enough to be a whisper. He could tell that she was incredibly sad; she looked as if she might be crushed beneath the weight of it. Her eyes shone like perfect, polished spheres of glass, and this is where the emotion emanated from. He wanted to close those eyes and place a gentle kiss on the lid of each one, with their borders of lashes and traceries of delicate veins. He wanted to cradle her in his arms and _become_ her home, his embrace impenetrable to the threats and dangers around them. His heart felt unbearably tender when he saw her suffering, swollen and bruised to the point that it ached with every beat. And despite his crippling fear, despite her wishes on the matter, he wished once more to die so that they might never be parted.

"I'm okay now though," he insisted. "See? Totally fine."

She nodded. "I see, and I'm relieved. But I don't want you to have to feel like that because of me." He didn't know what to say to that—it _was_ because of her, but it _wasn't_ her fault, and he didn't feel he could convey that well enough.

"I'm sorry," she finally said. "I wasn't trying to put you in an uncomfortable position, but that's just what I've done. Let's forget it and move on."

"I had asked you about the boat."

"Yes, I remember. I want you to know that I'm not going to bother with some specifics, but only because they don't matter just yet. I want to tell you the important parts without delving too far into it." When he nodded in agreement, she continued.

"A number of years ago, I ran into a man in a coffee shop. He was going to use the last of his money to buy himself one, and it was clear that he'd come a very long distance to get there, so I paid for his order too. We got to chatting, and decided to sit and talk together.

"He told me about how he had gotten there, and I asked him why he had traveled so far on so little money. He explained that he was trying to find a sponsor to provide him with a boat, so that he could enter a sailing race in order to win his love back."

All of this sounded familiar to Hurley, and the reason why was right on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite grab hold of it yet. "Did you help him find a sponsor?"

"Close. I actually gave him a boat myself."

Hurley stammered, trying to speak but failing. She'd had enough money to just give boats away? Even if she did, why should that matter?

"Hurley, remember when I told you that I had been married?"

"Yeah. Three times. If you count the annulments."

"The boat belonged to my husband, who had died the month before."

Hurley was surprised; from what she had told him way back when, it had sounded like all of her marriages had ended in separation of some sort. "How did he die?"

She bit her lip. "He got sick."

It was clear that she couldn't bear to elaborate on that point, and Hurley assumed that the man had been killed by something like cancer. "I'm...I'm sorry." She nodded, showing that she appreciated it. "What was his name?"

"Not yet," she said, shaking her head. "In time, but not now. It doesn't have any bearing on this part of the story."

"Okay." He didn't want to push her on the topic of a dead loved one.

"My husband had gotten the yacht because he wanted to go sailing in the Mediterranean, but he passed away before he got the chance. Before he died, he named the boat after me."

"The_ Libby?"_

"The _Elizabeth."_

It felt as if a very strong someone wearing a set of brass knuckles had punched him in the gut. "No," he whispered. He was unable to believe any of it, despite knowing it was true. He could read that much from the look in her eyes, but wouldn't allow himself to accept it. He just couldn't.

"I gave it to a man named Desmond Hume. He crashed that boat in a storm and found himself stranded on an island. _Our_ Island."

"Why didn't you tell me before now?" he asked quietly.

"Hurley, I didn't have any reason to," she pleaded, standing up and taking a few steps around the table in his direction. "When you first met Desmond, I was on the other side of the Island, and he was gone before I got there. And when he came back, it was on the day you buried me. There was no reason why it would have occurred to me to say _anything_ about it."

"What about when you came back through the glass? Why did you wait so long this time?"

She walked forward and hugged him tightly. "You'll understand soon. I was scared to tell you _anything, _even though it's what I needed to come back for."

"Scared? You don't need to be afraid of me, Libby. I would never hurt you." He hugged her back, lifting her partway off the ground as he usually did.

"I know, hon, of _course_ I know that. I have never thought you would. I was afraid that..." She trailed off as she peeked over his shoulder. "Hurley. Put me down."

"What?"

"Put me down _now._ We have to get out of here."

He gently set her on her feet, perplexed. "Why? What is it?" He turned to follow her line of vision, and saw something on the horizon. It looked like a herd of some sort of animal, grayish with four legs and kicking up dirt and grass with hooves, but the creatures were too far away for him to make them out clearly. He squinted, cupping a hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun. "What _are_ those things?"

She seized his arm and jerked him back around, _hard_. "Don't look at them. If you can see them clearly, you're _fucked_. Remember how I said this is a way station? The living aren't supposed to come here. Those things are the regulators of this place."

"Wait, hold on! What's happening?"

"See those bones?" she asked, pointing to the ground in the general area of the staircase. "That's what they'll do to you if we don't get the hell out of here, _now._"

He started panicking, trying not to look at the strange herd headed their way and doing so anyway. "I thought you said I'd be safe here!"

"I said you would be, as long as you did exactly what I said. And right now, I'm telling you to _move!"_ She tore ahead, dragging him by the hand. He panted, half out of exertion and half from fear, and allowed her to yank him up the stairs. He looked back after they had mounted a few steps, and noted with alarm that the herd had quartered the distance to where they stood._ "Faster!"_ she screamed at him, tugging him back up whenever he tripped. She used more force than he would have thought her physically capable of, and her frantic reaction terrified him more than whatever was headed their way. "And _don't_ look back at them! Close your eyes if you have to!"

He couldn't do that, out of fear that he'd trip hard enough to fall back down and land among the bones littering the grass. He still hadn't been able to make out what those things were when he had glanced back, but he didn't try again. He didn't dare.

Up and up they climbed, and it became more difficult for Hurley to breathe as they continued. A painful cramp had developed in his side. "Can't run anymore," he panted, but he was yanked onward when he tried to slow down.

"Yes you _can!_ And if you want to get out of here alive, you _will!"_ He tripped and banged his knee, the impact sending lightning bolts of pain shooting up and down his leg. He screamed, but was forced to keep going; even if she hadn't been pulling him, he wouldn't have stopped for long. A high, horrid buzzing had risen in their ears, and it was coming from down below.

So he ran behind her, their hands linked and slick with sweat. He ran until it felt like he was breathing through a drinking straw, until it felt that whatever organs happened to lie under the stitch in his side would rupture. He ran and he ran, and then there was a flash of blinding light followed by darkness, and he dissolved into unconsciousness.

--

It felt as if he were floating, body suspended in some kind of syrupy liquid. Every part of him ached, from his banged knee to his chest to his throat.

"_Hurley..."_

He didn't want to wake up; he just _didn't._ Maybe if he stayed asleep he could die like this: peacefully. He'd drift along on the current of this viscous ocean, and he'd eventually wash up on some distant shore: the beach that was his true home now, no matter how much he denied it. He would walk along the water's edge until he came to the camp settlement, and there he would find Libby. The two of them, stopped in time together...they could exist like that for the rest of eternity.

"_Hurley."_

He groaned inwardly, feeling the tide recede around him. He didn't want any of that anymore. Enough with the pain and the grief and the guilt. Enough with the fear that he'd be left alone once more when it was her time to go. If that was life, he didn't want it anymore. He wanted whatever could let him be with her forever.

"_HURLEY!"_

Realizing that it was Libby calling out to him, he fought his way back to consciousness. The worry in her voice chipped away at his heart, and he couldn't bear to do anything to her that would make her sound like that. He blinked rapidly, finally opening his eyes to see her tear-stained face above him. He moaned a little, and she began to cry harder. "Where'm I?"

"On the living room floor," she sobbed, before burying her face in his chest. "I'm sorry, Hurley. I'm so sorry."

He painfully lifted a hand to cup the back of her head. "Am I dying?" He thought that if he was, it might not be so bad: when he joined her, she could stop her crying.

"No! Oh god, _no,_ Hurley!" Her body was wracked with sobs, and she shook against him. "But it's my fault for bringing you there. I just didn't want to say it here, in a place where we've loved together, and it was the only other place we could really go to...and now you're hurt, because I acted like a selfish child by dragging you along."

"Don't cry," he said, voice hollow, and he wondered how his throat could be so painful and dry if it hadn't really been his body running up that staircase. "Please don't cry, Libby. It's okay."

"Can you forgive me? For telling you all those things, and then hurting you like this?"

He wanted to say that there was nothing she needed to be forgiven _for, _but some part of him still felt betrayed by the fact that the revelations had been so long in coming. Even putting that aside, he could tell that saying such a thing to her wouldn't set her at ease in the slightest.

"Yeah," he said, ruffling her hair absently. "Yeah, I forgive you. So _please,_ don't cry anymore."

--

"You're still angry with me, aren't you?"

He was making the bed the day after they had returned, and she stood in the doorway of his room—_their_ room—trying to get through to him.

"Hurley."

He shrugged without turning to face her as he tucked the fitted sheet into place. Each movement hurt, his muscles possessed by a deep, hot ache from their straining to mount the staircase. "What d'you want me to say? Yeah, I guess I am. Maybe that's wrong, but if it is, I can't help it. I _am." _He thought silently for a moment. "I guess I'm not really all that mad at you. Just at the situation."

"Why?" Her arms were crossed, but not in a gesture of anger. She knew why he was mad, but she wanted to hear it in his own words. To hear his exact reasons.

He had to bite his tongue to keep from saying _why do you think? _"Because you gave a boat to Desmond, and I was with Desmond all that time, and I knew the name of his boat, and I never put it together, and...there are just so many things I don't _know_ about you, Libby. I don't know why you couldn't have told me when you first came back to me."

"Because I was _scared_," she said quietly, stepping towards him. "Because I love you, and I was afraid that you wouldn't believe that after I started to tell you these things."

"Why?" he asked, replacing the freshly-laundered sheets and blankets. "Why would that have made me doubt how you feel? You had a husband who died before you met me, and you gave some guy a boat. How would that have changed anything? I don't know if you noticed, but like _everybody_ on the island had some crazy connection to someone else."

She remained quiet, coming to the other side of the bed and picking up the pillowcases flopped over the headboard. She pushed the pillows into them firmly, and fluffed them before laying them at the head of the bed. "It wasn't _those_ things in particular, what I told you yesterday. It's just that everybody has their own dirty little secrets, and if I started by telling you those things, something else would eventually come up that _would_ make you doubt me. It's not like you haven't doubted my affection in the past, Hurley. You disbelieved it so much at first that you became convinced you had made me up, and that was _before_ I told you anything about my past."

"I, uh...I never really didn't believe _you_ because I thought that you were a liar or anything. Not a lot, anyway. It was because I didn't see how you could choose someone like me." He was silent for a moment. "I don't think much of myself," he said suddenly. "Or I didn't. Not until you showed me that I could matter in _that_ way to someone."

"I know," she said, her voice soft. "I know that. And you have a right to feel angry; if not at me, then at least at the circumstances that forced it to be like this. But I need to know if you still feel the same way about me as you did before."

"Yeah. Yeah, 'course I do."

"Then come here," she said, holding out her arms and moving around the foot of the bed to meet him. "I love you, you know. No matter what you might come to believe, I love you." He enclosed her in his arms, and they almost fell upon the bed in sweet slow-motion.

Their lovemaking that day was tender and languid, bittersweet but eternally affectionate.

--

When the knock came at the door, Hurley nearly had a heart attack.

It had been what seemed like an eternity since he'd had any visitors. He certainly hadn't had any since Libby had come back to him, and that was what...a month ago? Two? Three? More? It was so hard for him to get a handle on time where that was concerned, and he had mostly given up trying. He didn't even care if anyone came to see him ever again—Libby was all he needed or wanted in his life now, the rest of the world be damned. And then, out of the blue, there was someone at his door. He wondered if the universe was trying to shock him to death sometimes.

The rapping was short, loud, and authoritative without coming from anger. It seemed that answering the door was not something he could refuse: it bordered on mandatory. Libby was taking a shower, and he was glad she wouldn't be forced to hide. He didn't know if his unknown visitor would be able to see her or not, but he didn't want to take the chance.

Grasping the knob, he gently opened the door and found himself standing face-to-face with Jack Shephard. First came surprise, then trepidation, followed by an unkind and unfair thought that he couldn't control:

_You didn't even try to save her._

"Jack," he said, genuinely shocked. "Dude, what're you doing here?"

"Came to see how you were doing," Jack replied, putting what was supposed to be a friendly smile on his face. They all pretended, but things had just gotten more and more awkward the longer they continued living their lie. "I heard you were out of the institute, but I wanted to give you a chance to settle back in before I stopped by. So, how are you?"

"Good," he said, and he wasn't lying; but he had a feeling that no doctor who knew the full situation would ever agree. "Things've been going a lot easier for me lately." That wasn't _exactly_ true, but he'd rather put up with the eerie events of this new life than the crushing depression and loneliness of his old one.

"That's good to hear," he said, trying to peek past Hurley to see the interior of his living room. "Are you going to invite me in, or are we just going to stand here all day?"

He had opened his mouth to say _sure, _and then realized a split-second later what a bad idea that would be. He had become so used to their presence that he had forgotten how jarring the painting-filled walls would appear to someone else. And _Jack_, of all people, would know who the subject of his artwork was.

"I, uh, don't think that's such a good idea, man," he stammered unconvincingly. "I'm kinda busy right now."

But Jack, taking charge as always, nudged and slipped his way past him.

Hurley winced, and Jack merely stood there for a few moments, silently taking it all in. "What is this?" he asked, as if he was clueless as to what the art contained. "Did you paint all of these _yourself?"_

"'Course I did," he snapped, annoyed. "I didn't hire anyone to do it, don't worry. I didn't tell anyone about her."

"That's not why I was asking." He turned in place, surveying the makeshift gallery. "Hurley, this isn't healthy. You need help."

"No, I _don't!_ This is like the first time in forever when I _don't_ need help!"

Jack looked about to reply, before staring ahead at the corridor branching off towards the bathroom and bedroom. "Do you have the _shower_ running?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Who's in there?"

"Nobody." And then, just as if fate had decided that this was the opportune moment to make his life more difficult, muffled snatches of song began to drift down the hall, the voice singing them untrained and unrefined but organically melodic:

"_There was a time you let me know,  
What's real and going on below,  
But now you never show it to me, do you?  
And remember when I moved in you_,_  
The holy dark was moving too,  
And every breath we drew was hallelujah_..."

Hurley was so moved by both the lyrics and the sweetness of their sound that he didn't consider the potential consequences. Jack turned pale as he placed the voice, looking from the hallway to Hurley. "Did you hear that?"

His heart skipped a beat, he was so frightened. "Did _you?"_ He was shocked stiff, but when Jack began to move towards the hall he sprang back to life. _"No,"_ he said, grabbing Jack by the shoulder and jerking him around. "You really need to leave. Like _now,_ dude. I'm sorry."

"What the _fuck_ is going on?!" he yelled, fighting to stay in place and failing.

"This is _my_ life, Jack," Hurley insisted with more force than he thought possible. "Not yours. And this is my house, too." He shoved Jack towards the front door and pushed him over the threshold.

"Hur—" Jack began, but Hurley slammed the door in his face and ignored all subsequent knocking. It kept up for a while, but eventually Jack must have gotten sick of it and finally went away.

"Hurley?" He turned to see Libby standing behind him, wrapped in one thick white towel and trying to rub some of the wetness from her hair with another. "Who was that?"

After a moment of quiet, he gave one final glance back at the door before going to her and putting his hand on her back. "Nobody we need to worry about," he answered, leading her towards the bedroom to get dressed.

--

The days that followed were mostly good ones. They cooked together, read together, watched television together. They slept together and made love in their bed, sometimes more than once a day, just as Libby had anticipated. Sometimes they just sat on the couch in companionable silence, dissolving into kissing and touching every so often. Gradually, Hurley felt his heart begin to heal. He knew just a little more about her now and therefore saw her in a different light, but it was no better and no worse than his former view of her. Just _different_, which wasn't always a bad thing. He was happy that she was finally confiding in him, in fact.

"Hurley," she ventured. Today, they were laid out upon the bed and just touching each other.

"Yeah?"

"Could you hold me?"

He was bewildered. "Of course. You don't even have to ask, just tell me." Her drew her against himself, and she curled up into a partial fetal position.

"I don't think we have much more time left to be together."

He wrapped his arms even more tightly around her. "Don't say stuff like that. You don't have to leave, because I'd never want you to. We can live off my settlement easy. I'd never have to leave you by yourself if you didn't want me to." He paused. "Screw the rest of the world. I don't want it."

"If it were entirely up to me, which it isn't, I still wouldn't stay. I _want_ nothing more than to stay right here, but I still wouldn't. You need to move on someday, and this isn't making it any easier for you. Drawing this out for so long, when I could have just told you everything I came to say and departed...that's the greedy part of me doing that, the part that wants to stay with you anyway. But it can't last forever."

"You'd have to leave once you said what you needed to say?"

"Yes. It's so _cruel._ That's why I didn't tell you everything at once: I wanted to make up for all the things we should have gotten a chance to experience together. For both of us." She nestled her head against his arm. "We should have had more time. It wasn't fair."

"Do you really have to tell me anything, then? Can't you just, like, never say it, and then be able to stay?"

"No. I need to tell you. I have to do it because you deserve to know—you were my redemption, and it's not fair to keep it from you. And I have to do it for myself."

"You saved my life. You were _my_ redemption."

"You saved me, too. You don't know how yet, but you did."

He was silent for a time, breathing into the fluffs of hair that stuck up from her head here and there. "When?" he asked, his voice full of resignation.

"Soon."

He buried his face in her hair, and she tangled her hands in his shirt when she felt the hot beads of his tears wet her scalp. "I'm so sorry, Hurley. I am _so_ sorry."


	5. Chapter of the Ring

Author's Note: This is the final "chapter," but there will be an epilogue after this, so stay tuned!

**Chapter of the Ring**

_Jillian, our dream ended long ago,  
All our stories and all our glory I held so dear.  
We won't be together  
Forever and ever, no more tears.  
I'll always be here until the end.  
I'd give my heart, I'd give my soul,  
I'd turn it back, it's my fault.  
Your destiny is forlorn, have to live 'til it's undone.  
I'd give my heart, I'd give my soul,  
I'd turn it back and then at last I'll be on my way._

_- Within Temptation, "Jillian"  
_

--

Knowing that time was running out, Hurley tried to cram as much of the life he had wished for them into the days or weeks they had left together. He went out in the early morning while she still slept, and returned with expensive champagne and massive bouquets of roses. Once, he even brought back two very large stuffed animals for her: a golden retriever and a black lab.

When he had trouble sleeping, he just sat there, flicking on a weak lamp in order to watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the peaceful expression on her face and the minute twitches of her fingers. They made love whenever she was in the mood for it, and he held her until they finally drifted off. Waking in the morning, he always found himself still holding her, having not shifted _once_ as he normally did all night long.

Libby acted the same way. She always insisted upon cooking, and prepared all the recipes he had liked best when she made them the first time. Tastefully sexy outfits manifested themselves, the sort of thing she had tried on for him that day back in the hatch, and she would wear them every day for him. As long as they were close together, she would sit so close against him that he thought she was trying to form one entity with him, to force them to absorb into each other.

Even though she tried to spend all the time she could with him, she set aside one half-hour every evening for herself; during that time, she would pore over _House of Leaves_ intently, despite the fact that she had finished reading it long ago. She would twiddle a bookmark of red ribbon between her fingers, but never used it as far as he could tell: she always marked her place with a scrap of notebook paper, setting the ribbon aside.

One afternoon, he asked her to take a shower.

"Why, do I smell or something?" she asked sarcastically.

"'Course not. Just please take one. You'll understand later, I promise." In truth, a shower was the only way he'd have any length of guaranteed alone time, and his plan depended on it.

"Whatever you say, Big Dog." Once the water was running, he snuck into the bathroom and placed a few pieces of clothing upon the counter housing the sink. It was her green t-shirt and jeans—the outfit she never wore anymore—freshly washed, dried and folded. There was a brief note pinned to the shirt: _wear this._

That being done, he rushed back into the living room and opened the lower doors of his antique china cabinet. A few days ago, he had stashed some items there: a large blanket; a waxen army of candles; a box of matches; a picnic basket containing a bottle of Cabernet, silverware, plates, napkins and two of his wineglasses. He laid the blanket out and plunked the basket atop it before running around the room, placing candles upon every surface and lighting them, burning the tips of his fingers a few times in the process.

A quick run to the kitchen later, he sped back into the living room, his arms laden with food he had bought for the occasion and hidden in the back of a crisper drawer: chocolate-covered strawberries, various cheeses, and slices of German chocolate cake. He tumbled the lot into the basket, being careful not to break the fragile goblets already inside, and got up to close the curtains and shut off any lights that might be on. The candlelight cast a warm and cozy glow, and he stood still for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust. Before he could go over everything one more time and make sure it was right, Libby was standing in the doorway.

"What's going on?" she asked, surprised. She was taking in the room, eyes enchanted by the candlelight. "What is all this?"

He was pleased to see that she was wearing the clothes he'd set out for her, and he ran to her and clasped her hand. "C'mon. Sit down." She followed him to the blanket and took a seat upon the floor, looking at the picnic basket between them.

"Oh my god, Hurley. Is this...is this supposed to be—"

"Our picnic?" he finished. "Yeah, it is. We never got to have it, but we're making up for it now. I got the food and the wine 'specially for this. And the blanket, too. I didn't forget this time."

She laughed gently, tears in her eyes. "Hurley, I don't know what to say!"

He clutched the legs of his jeans, making sure that the hard, squarish lump was still present in one pocket. "You don't have to say anything about it. Let's just talk normally, like people are supposed to do on their first real date."

Her smile was as warm and pure as the candle flames surrounding them. "Sure."

--

They had eaten the food slowly, finding no reason on Earth why they should rush any part of it. They had nibbled on the pieces of cheese before moving to the strawberries, which they fed to each other, giggling, managing to clumsily stain each others' shirts and cheeks with smears of dark chocolate in the process. The slices of cake were touched last, of course, paired with their second glasses of wine.

"This is so _amazing,"_ she said finally, swishing the wine around in her glass. "We should have been able to do this _then,_ but there's no way it could have topped this. You're just..._amazing._ I'm running out of words to describe all this, so you'll be hearing 'amazing' a lot."

"If you were still alive, I'd wanna spend the rest of our lives together." He studied a nearby candle flame, his eyes seeming to flicker along with it before turning to look her in the eyes. "Do you feel the same way?"

"Yes. I don't want anything else, and if things were different, maybe we _could_ have been together like that."

"Remember when we watched _Harold and Maude?"_

She smiled. "How could I forget?"

"Good. 'Cuz I, uh...I want you to _really_ understand where this is coming from, Libby." He rose on his knees to give his hand room to slip into right pocket, coming out with the little velvet jewelry box. Then he got down on one knee, and presented her with the box.

"Oh god," she whispered, hands fluttering to her throat. He opened the box: inside sat an elegant golden band, fitted with a diamond sizable enough to really catch the light but not so big as to be gaudy. The band was a little wider than on most engagement rings, but it didn't detract from the beauty.

"Libby, will you marry me?"

"Oh god, Hugo," she stammered, laughing softly even as tears spilled from her lashes. "It's beautiful, but...you know that I can't stay with you."

"Yeah, I do," he firmly agreed, staying down on one knee. "I get that. But that doesn't mean that we can't be engaged until then, does it? It doesn't mean that I can't give you this and live that way with you until the end."

"You're making it so much harder for yourself by doing this," she whispered.

"I know. I don't care. I'm going to be miserable no matter what. Right now, I want to do what I know is right." He continued to stare directly into her eyes, tears beginning to form on his lashes as well. "So will you marry me?"

"Yes." She broke out into a smile, lips quivering as she tried not to cry more than she already had. "Yes, Hugo, I will."

He laughed, face scrunching up as he grinned at her through his tears. She held out her shaking left hand, and he carefully slipped the ring onto her slender white finger. They were both sobbing, and there seemed to be not only joy in it, but sadness and resignation as well. "I know we'll never be able to get married, like, _legally,"_ he said, holding her left hand between both of his, "and I know we don't have a lot of time...but for now, I sort of consider us to be husband and wife. I still don't know your last name, but—"

"I don't want it," she interrupted, bringing her other hand up to clasp the back of his left one. "It doesn't matter what it was right now. I _repudiate_ it. From now on, I'll be Mrs. Reyes."

"Awesome." He put his other knee down and drew her close to him, cupping her head with one hand and the small of her back with the other.

"Yeah. Really, truly _awesome." _

--

Even knowing what she had to do, she pushed it back one more week. A week was all she could really spare, and it was to be both their honeymoon and their entire marriage, so she refused to spoil it. Just one week of bliss before the rending. It would have to be enough.

When he awoke on the morning of that eighth day, he could sense some palpable change in the air before he even opened his eyes. And when he noticed that his arms closed upon nothing, he looked to find Libby fully dressed, sitting on her side of the bed with her back to him. Her head and shoulders were slumped, and she kicked one foot in the air above the floor lazily.

For a good two minutes he just watched her, not knowing what to say, his eyes practically burning holes in her back as he observed her. When he found the will to speak, it was only one word.

"Now?"

There was a momentary pause in the swinging of her foot, but it soon resumed. "Yeah. Now." Then: "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he said, hauling himself up and reaching to lay a hand on her shoulder blade. "I'm not angry with you because I have to lose you again. If I didn't, like, have to, that would mean you hadn't ever come back in the first place. And I would never wish that, no matter how bad this is going to hurt me. Because I love you."

She tensed under his touch. "Elizabeth Ann Widmore," she said flatly, keeping herself turned away from him.

The implications of what she had said didn't register with him right away. He thought he must have heard her wrong or something. "What?"

"The Widmore line has two branches: the British one, which is the main one, and an American one. You know Desmond's girlfriend Penny, right? Of course you do. She's my cousin so-and-so times removed. That son of a bitch Charles Widmore is my uncle. My name is _Elizabeth Ann Widmore."_

He didn't say anything; it seemed to him that he had been turned inside out, his raw nerves left exposed to the bite of the air. When it became obvious that he could not reply, she continued.

"You never stepped on my foot when you boarded the plane, Hurley. I was in the tail section; you were never even _near_ me. I said that because you told me you thought you knew me from somewhere, remember? I didn't think you would recognize me, and came up with that on the spot to cover myself. Luckily, you believed me."

"I don't understand," he stammered, speaking as though he had to fight to unstick his jaw. "I don't get any of this, Libby." He withdrew his hand as if her body heat was enough to burn him alive.

"You don't want to understand, but you do. You can keep telling yourself that you don't, but that won't make it any more true. You were right, though: you had seen me before. I was institutionalized in Santa Rosa at the same time as you. My hair was brown back then, which is probably why you didn't make the full connection that day in the hatch. I'm 'Crazy Elizabeth Widmore', the embarrassment of one entire half of an illustrious family." She laughed scornfully. "This is who your 'savior' is, Hurley. The great love of your life is a liar and a cheat. Still feel the same way about me as you did before?"

Hurley had gone so white that there appeared to be no blood at all in his veins. He was gutted; he could practically feel the red-hot incision going from just below his chin to his groin. Clearly, some madman had carved into him while he slept and taken out all his insides, his entrails and his lungs and his heart, because he felt unbelievably hollow and cold. His forearms and calves were riddled with pins and needles, painful to move but numb to outside stimuli. And still, he could not find any words to say that could convey the way he felt. No phrases were severe enough to come close.

"My husband and I both worked for the DHARMA Initiative. My main focus was psychological manipulation, and his was temporal manipulation; neither of us really knew to what end we were working, but we were happy to go along with it, because we thought we were saving humanity. One day, something went wrong with one of the reactors on-site, and he got sick. He had no idea where he was, and he kept talking about visiting some zoo with his parents when he was a kid, whenever he wasn't catatonic. He just raved and raved, and then his nose started bleeding. Eventually, his eyes and ears bled too, and then he died. His brain just overloaded and sort of 'short-circuited'."

Silence.

"I kept working even after he died. I told myself I could handle it. That's what psychologists do, is handle things. And for a while, it worked. I took only four days off for the funeral and some recuperation time, and I cried myself to sleep at night. I smashed many of our belongings in a frenzy of grief and sold the rest. But even through all that, I _kept working_. It was familiar, and it helped me stay sane.

"Things seemed like they were starting to get easier with every day that passed. And just under a month later, I was assigned a job. I was to get in touch with a man named Desmond Hume and give him my husband's boat. They said that he was seeking my cousin's affections, and wanted to enter a sailing race around the world to win her heart."

Silence.

"Of _course_ I did it. My heart was breaking, and I had a chance to help someone else find love. I thought that's what they wanted me to do: to help this Desmond fellow out, and secure the race for him. I thought they were helping set him up with Penny. I was wrong, and when it said on the news that he had been lost at sea, I realized what they had used me for. They wanted to get rid of him, and I was in a fragile enough state to do it for them without even realizing it.

"I lost it; had a complete mental and emotional breakdown. My family had more than enough money to get me the best help there was, but they had me involuntarily committed to Santa Rosa instead. I was an embarrassment to them with the way I was acting, and they just didn't want to deal with me. So I got cast aside and hidden like some ugly secret nobody wanted to own up to. Just a skeleton in their walk-in closet.

"And while I was there, Hurley, I found _you._ At first, I only saw you every once in a while in the rec room, while you were talking to Leonard. I fixated on you, because you were the only person there who didn't actually seem in need of psychological care. You were funny, and nice, and you seemed completely coherent and in control of yourself...so I watched you. You were like a beacon of normalcy for me. You _fascinated_ me."

Hurley felt outside of himself. His soul was a balloon tethered to his wrist by a long string rather than part of him. He was looking down from above in order to watch with a new perspective. One that wouldn't continue to kill him inside.

"I thought that maybe, by watching you behave normally, I would eventually be able to drag myself back into the business of living. So I cooperated in my therapy sessions, and I took the drugs they gave me. And then one day, my dead husband showed up, and whatever handhold I had gained back into the world crumbled. Nobody else could see him, just you and me. They thought you were crazy, and if they had known that I saw him, they would have thought me even crazier. But I knew better. It was my David, and though he didn't react to my presence, he seemed to be quite attached to you."

The balloon burst. "Dave?"

"Yeah. Dave."

He laughed, a sound that was hollow and devoid of warmth. "He can't be your dead husband. I made him up." A few tears had begun to roll down his cheeks, but he was completely unaware that he was crying. "He had my dad's name and everything. I couldn't deal with all the stuff around me, and I made him up to keep from having to handle it."

"The fact that my husband and your father share the same name is just coincidence," she said, still refusing to turn to him. "The thing that's wrong about it is the fact that _he did not act like my husband._ He looked exactly the same, and he had the same fun attitude on the outside, but that was it. He was out to keep you feeling miserable, Hurley. He kept trying to get you to overeat, to keep you from taking your pills, to break out from the institution.

"Your Dave was partly my David, and partly your manifestation of guilt and shame, but he was also partially someone else. Between his death and then, I think something...something _got into_ him. Some outsider. Some _other._ And I can't even begin to _guess_ what the rest of it was. All I can think is that it must have started when his accident happened...when whatever he was doing went wrong."

She paused in her speaking, seemingly trying to curl into herself more tightly by bringing her legs up against her chest.

"I told them, Hurley. I had the administration call and write my family constantly until they sent someone to meet with me, and I told them everything. About seeing David. About how, aside from me, you were the only one who realized he was there. I expected them to just request stricter confinement and more meds, but they didn't. The person my family sent called someone on a cell phone, and then told me I was coming home with them. They let me go. And after my release papers were signed, they told me something: you're not crazy, Hurley, and you never were. The people in your life thought you were, and the people in Santa Rosa thought you were...hell, even _you_ thought you were. But you're not. You can just see things that most people can't. They said I had 'hit the jackpot'.

"DHARMA and Widmore kept tabs on you, and when the time came for you to be released, they assigned _me_ to keep tabs on you. Even after the way they treated me, the way they got me to send Desmond to get killed or worse, and how they locked me away when I was grieving...I did what they told me to do. Because I was _weak._ I lived within walking distance of your house, and I traveled wherever you traveled. When you won the lottery and moved, I moved too."

He felt sick to his stomach. If he had eaten anything before hearing this, he would have gotten violently ill right then and there.

"Over time, it stopped being a job for me. I got to see you interact with your family and friends. I watched you live out in the real world, away from the institution. You didn't know me, but I knew you. Without even realizing it at first, I slowly fell for you. Then I followed you to Australia, and while you went out to find the origin of your numbers, I sat in a hotel room and thought about my life. I decided that when we arrived back in Los Angeles, I would walk right up to you and introduce myself. Just tell you everything, and then help you to run, to evade the people watching you. That's when you became my redemption, Hurley. I loved you, and I didn't care about anything _but_ you. Not even my own safety. You inspired me to be honest for the first time in my life.

"When our plane crashed, I thought you had died. I lived under that assumption for forty-eight days, and my resolve eroded when I thought I didn't need it anymore. I knew where we were as soon as the Hostiles first came for us; I didn't expect for any of us to ever be rescued. So when my group arrived at your beach and I saw you alive, I decided I didn't need to say anything. I had a clean slate, and I could start a new life there. With _you."_

Silence.

"But then I died. You never really knew who 'Libby' was. You had saved me from myself, and you never even suspected it. I came back to you now because I wanted to be with you, _and_ because you deserved to know about my shame and guilt when I knew all about yours." She turned her face to him, eyes dry. "So now you know."

She stood up, back to him once more, and walked to the open doorway. "I know you'll need some time alone to cry, but there's one more sliver of the story to be told. When you're ready for it, come find me."

She slipped into the hall.

--

She was right: he did need to cry. He cried for a long, long time.

Whatever it was he was feeling, there wasn't a word he could find to describe it. It was shock-betrayal-chagrin-grief-anger-sorrow-hatred-regret-PAIN. He scrunched the blanket up to his face, crushing it against himself, and bawled. He could almost feel colors melting out of him: the rose pinks and honey golds and tender greens that represented affection and trust and contentment and so many other things, all of them condensed into wet vapor and pushing their way out of his skin as cold sweat.

For nearly two hours straight, he just laid there in a semi-fetal position, his full weight shaking under the force of his depression. By the time he was finished, his eyes felt so dry and scratchy that they could have been rubbed with sandpaper, and a gluey coating had adhered itself to the roof of his mouth. For exactly forty-two minutes, he took calming breaths and finally thought the feeling was passing. In the forty-third minute, be broke down in sobs again. This time he cried himself exhausted, eventually passing out when the strength to even keep his eyes open was beyond him.

His sleep was fitful; he would call out as he tossed and turned, sometimes names and actual words, sometimes just moans and whimpers. He awoke in the dead of night, and cried himself back to sleep once more.

When he woke again, he was dehydrated and utterly cried out, his whole body aching and his head pounding. Without any more tears in him, he was forced to consider again her words, the long and almost impossibly amazing story of her life. She had been in the nuthouse with him, she had fixated on him, and then she had been employed to stalk him wherever me might go. It was almost more than he could bear: she had been crazy when she first saw him and on paid assignment when she followed him. She had never _really_ chosen him, not in the truest sense of the word. At least not at first.

But then things had changed, or so she said. She had gotten to see who he really was, the good and the bad, and found herself fixated on him in a slightly healthier way. She knew how powerful her family and DHARMA were, and she had _still_ chosen to take her chances and assist him in escaping their observance. Even if that wasn't true, the part about the Island was—she hadn't tried to contact Dave his imaginary friend/David her husband/whatever else had become a part of that apparition. She had tried to help him exorcise his demons and finally begin to heal; she had saved him from death; and she had kissed him without ever expecting to get back to the outside world.

If all she had wanted to do was escape her family, she had done it by merely crashing on that Island. She wouldn't have even needed speak to him, let alone befriend him, and that's how he knew that her feelings now, if nothing else, were real.

Finally rising, he took a detour into the tiny bathroom that came off the bedroom. It only contained a toilet and a sink, but that's all he needed. Turning the faucet on, he scooped cold water with his hands and drank deeply, washing the bitterness out of his mouth, and splashed some on his face. After taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the hallway and went looking for her.

--

He didn't know which room she'd be in, but he tried the living room first and got lucky. She was seated on the couch, slumped over to study the object in her hands. It was the wineglass, the one she had first manifested herself in, and she was turning it over and over as if trying to memorize the patterns of colored light reflected there.

She had heard him come, but neither looked at nor spoke to him. "Libby," he said softly.

The glass turned, turned, rotating in her hands. "I'm surprised it only took you a day to come looking. After finding out what I did to you, I thought you would have taken it much worse."

"I took it pretty bad, as it is."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know you did. That's why I took so long to come out with it. I wanted to be happy with you for as long as I could, even if you came to hate and curse me at the end." A pause. "I really did love you, you know. When I told you the way I felt the day you almost killed yourself, I wasn't lying to save your life. I might not have _loved_ you when I first started watching you, but something was there. Affection, I guess you could call it," she said, one corner of her mouth turning up in a sad smile. "You had a way about you, and it was so _warm."_

"I believe you," he said, and he surprised even himself by saying it. She looked up at him, shocked. "I know I shouldn't, like, _rationally._ But I do anyway."

"Why?" she breathed, and he could see now that her eyes were red and puffy. She had been sobbing alone, just as he had been. "In god's name, Hugo,_ why? _I just told you that I had been watching you for years. I betrayed you. When I met you on the Island I pretended not to know you, and when you remembered me, I lied and made up some stupid story to cover my ass. How could you _ever_ believe me after all that?"

"Because when you turned to look at me yesterday morning, just before you walked out, I could see it in your eyes. They had the same...I don't know, the same _feeling_, that they had when you convinced me you were real back then. That's how I knew the rest of it was true—the stuff about your family, and your husband, and the institution and everything else. So I could tell you were being honest about how you felt, too. You lied to me a lot before, mostly lies of omission, but this wasn't the same as those times."

She smiled, her lips quivering. "I knew that when I left here, I would still love you. I never expected you to even want to _speak_ to me again."

He approached her, and she gently set the glass on the coffee table and slid aside to make room for him on the couch. "You're still wearing the ring I gave you," he noted, sitting down and looking over at her.

"Yeah. Of course I am."

"You probably noticed already, but, uh, see how the band looks a little bit funny?"

She held her hand out in front of her, turning it to better look the ring over. "It's just a little wider than most rings like this are, that's all. Why?"

"I was so excited before that I forgot to mention it, but I had it specially made like that. I needed to fit something on there, and I wanted it to be impossible to miss."

"What?"

"An inscription." He took her hand and gently pulled the ring off, handing it back to her. She tilted it in the light, and sure enough, tiny letters were etched into the gold of the inside of the band. The width allowed the words there to be better defined than they ordinarily would, and she could read them clearly:

_**This is real.**_

She clutched the ring to her chest as she burst into tears. He reached for her, and he held her delicately until her crying stopped.

"You _were_ Elizabeth Widmore, and you can't ever really change that. But _now_, you're Libby Reyes. That's who you are, and that's who I love."

She sniffed, still unable to release her grip on the ring long enough to put it back on. "Hugo..."

"That inscription, that's what you told me when you saved me: that you were real, I was real, and the way you felt was real." He rubbed her back. "Now I've gotten to save you with those same words." He gave her a hesitant, shaky smile. "So I guess that makes us even, huh?"

Finally, she opened her fist and slipped the ring back into place. "I know that you're hurt. And I know that the pain isn't going to stop anytime soon, no matter how gracious you are to me."

"Well, yeah I'm hurt," he said, as if everything were obvious. "I still feel, like, betrayed and used on some level. But I also still love you. And I know that even with everything you did before we met, your intentions at the end were genuine. Those were the days we got to spend together, and I don't regret them."

She couldn't think of a proper response, because she hadn't expected this reaction from him. "I love you still. Always."

"Yeah. Me too." He looked from her to the glass on the table. "You said there was still something left you needed to tell me. What is it?"

She smiled, reaching to take the glass back into her hand. "I told you already that when my husband died, I broke or sold most of the things that belonged to either him or the both of us together. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my husband was a connoisseur of fine wines. Along with sailing, they were the passions of his free time. We had already visited Bordeaux together about a year before he died, and he wanted to sail the Mediterranean next and then sample what Italy had to offer. That's why he was working on that boat, the one I gave Desmond. We were supposed to go on a romantic trip together."

She tapped her fingernail against the wineglass, and it gave off a clear, pure ringing note in reply. "I smashed all the bottles of wine he had left behind. The glasses, too. And when I was done smashing everything else in the room I could get my hands on, I collected up what was left and whole to sell off."

Hurley was beginning to understand, but he allowed her to finish what she had to say without cutting in.

"There were originally two of these. They're Venetian glass, very delicately crafted. We had lots of larger matching sets of wineglasses for when company arrived, but these were the ones we used when we were alone together. This one here is the only glass that wasn't broken in my grief. I sold it to a high-end antique shop along with some other items. And since I was able to come to you through this," she said finally, passing him the glass, "I must have been the last one to drink from it."

He held it carefully, the cool glass refreshing against his palm. "That's amazing. It's hard to believe something like that could be a coincidence."

"That's because it isn't," she said. "Not this time. I had something to tell you, and fate shifted to allow me to do so. But I'm not the person who came to tell you what you _need_ to hear. You have to listen to Charlie now."

"Why? I was afraid of him when he first came back. I'm still afraid of him now."

"Because you have to go back, Hurley. Back to the Island." She saw him blanch, and she touched his hand. "Not now. Not for some time, and you won't be the person who initiates it. Eventually, though, you will go."

"I don't want to go back," he said. He spoke slowly and firmly, as if making sure he was pronouncing each syllable correctly.

"You know that's not true, so don't lie to yourself. Even the ones who seem to want to return the least...some part of them does want it. _Needs_ it, even."

"Why?"

"Once you've been touched by that place, you can't just wash it off. We all used it in order to find redemption, and now it's using us, both the living and the dead. Beyond that, I don't know."

"Okay. I don't really understand it, but okay. If it's not for a while, I won't worry about it now." He raised the glass. "The glass, though...if we could find each other with it once, then you can stay with me, right? All we need is this."

She smiled once more, but it was a sad smile. "If I stay any longer, it would only do damage to you. We made up for lost time, and you learned who I used to be. You've moved on enough to accept the fact that this couldn't be forever. That has to be enough. Neither of us wants that, but it needs to be that way. It's the way life is. Even this small amount of time we shared was more than we should have received in the first place."

"I can't just accept that," he said, shaking his head. "Not when I know you could stay."

"I know. And that's alright, it really is. You don't have to think about it right now, okay? Don't worry yourself yet."

"Yeah," he said, relieved that she was postponing the subject.

She took the glass from him gently with her left hand, glancing at it before looking him in the eye. "I _love_ you, Hugo."

"I love you too," he said back, unsure of why she felt the need to say it again. She leaned in, sliding her right hand across his cheek, and they kissed, deeply and passionately. When they pulled away, they were both smiling.

"We got to say our goodbyes this time," she said, tilting her head and looking at him adoringly.

"What?"

And it hit him.

It was too late for him to act. She still had the glass in one hand, and now held it out and away from him. She gripped it by the bell cup, and the question was scarcely out of his mouth before she squeezed. Stress fractures ran through the glass like cracks in ice, and then it shattered. The shards pattered to the couch, bouncing lightly on the cushions and sliding over onto the rug.

"NO!" he screamed, but her hand was upon his cheek one moment and gone the next. The middle of the couch, where she had just been sitting, was empty. For the second and final time, she had slipped away from his touch and into death right before his eyes.

Libby was gone.


	6. Epilogue: Filtered Light and the Book

**Epilogue: Filtered Light and the Book**

_I think they meant it,  
When they said you can't buy love;  
Now I know you can rent it,  
A new lease you were, my love, on life.  
All my life  
I've longed to discover,  
Something as true  
As this is..._

_-RENT, "I'll Cover You Reprise"_

--

Having already fastened a suction cup to his bedroom window, Hurley gently hung the ornament from its little hook and stood back to admire it.

The craftsman who had done it for him had tried to talk him out of it. The pieces of glass were too different in size and shape and curvature, he said, and he wouldn't be able to make a clean-cut shape from it. Hurley hadn't cared; not everything in life was so neatly constructed, and that was fine. It didn't mean it wasn't worthwhile.

In the end, however, the craftsman had agreed—the fact that Hurley was paying him probably had a lot to do with that—and set to work blunting and smoothing the sharp edges of the glass shards. The fragments were soldered together, and a string was looped through a small eyelet of wire at the top.

It wasn't any shape conventional to geometry, or a pretty, whimsical one either. It was disorganized and messy-looking and he _loved_ it. The sunlight passing through it was stained rose and blue and green, projected onto his sheets as a softly glowing miasma. It hit the right side of the bed, the side she had slept on when she had still been with him.

He smiled softly at the sun catcher, all that was left of the broken wineglass. The glass itself, as an object of its own, was gone, but it had left its pieces behind. They couldn't be put back together into a wineglass again, but they could take a new shape and cast such beautiful light for him.

A lot of things seemed to work that way.

He had begun the process of moving on with his life: he stored most of his paintings and sketches in the hall closet, leaving only a few of his favorites up. The painting of them on the plane, him stepping on her foot, had been shoved in the incinerator and burned—it had been a lie, and there was no reason to keep it around anymore. He was getting out of the house just to breathe fresh air, cooking healthier food, and even starting some mild exercise when he was in the privacy of his own home. He was more secure in himself, but not quite confident enough to join a gym. Not just yet.

He had been so lonely and depressed and grief-stricken for the first few days alone, but the worst of it had eventually passed. She had told him she had loved him more than anything or anyone else, and it must have been true, because she had finally been able to sacrifice her own happiness to let him go. Even though it hurt them both, she had done what was best for him. He was finally able to accept that, as well as her love, and he was grateful to her now for going through with what he himself could never have done. He still missed her, and he supposed that he _always_ would. That pain would _always_ be there. But that was okay with him, because when you came right down to it, it meant that he had truly loved her with all of his heart.

When she had vanished, all of her things had disappeared with her: her clothes, her books, her movies. He didn't care about any of that; the only thing that made a difference to him was the fact that her engagement ring had gone with her as well. She had taken it along on her journey, and that brought him some measure of comfort. Wherever she might be now, she was still wearing it, and it was a bond that could not be severed, not even by death.

Yeah, he thought he could live without her if he tried. It was hard, but not impossible. She was gone now, but nothing could erase the time they had spent together. And that _was_ enough.

He turned around and made for the bed, meaning to sit there and bathe in the colored glow from the sun catcher, when his foot bumped into something just under the bed frame. Bending to retrieve it, he was surprised to find that she hadn't taken _everything_ she had owned back into death.

It was the novel she had been reading, the one that had given him the creeps. He blew the light film of dust from the cover, and read the title to himself once more: _House of Leaves_. Running his fingers across it, he found something sticking up from between the pages. It was the red ribbon bookmark she had held onto but never actually used, or so he had thought.

He cracked open the book to find a passage that she had gone over in yellow highlighter, on page 518. Intrigued, he sat down on the edge of the mattress to read it.

_Of course there will always be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left or romance, still hidden in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar._

_Sometimes it's just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard even by the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all._

_Just as you have swept through me._

_Just as I now sweep through you._

Closing his eyes, he pressed the book to his lips and sighed.

--

_-fin-_


End file.
